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THE EVERY-DAY PHILOSOPHER. 



By the same Author, 



UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME. 

— ♦ — 

I. 

THE RECREATIONS 

OF A 

COUNTRY PARSON. 

FIRST AND SECOND SERIES. 
II. 

LEISURE HOURS IN TOWN. 

1 volume. 



■♦■ 



THE GRAVER THOUGHTS 

OF A 

C O U ]S T R Y P A R SON 

1 volume. 



riCKNOR AND FIELDS, Publishers. 



THE 



EVERY-DAY PHILOSOPHER 



TOWN AND COUNTRY. 



BY THE AUTHOR OF 
THE RECREATIONS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 





BOSTON: 
TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 

1863. 






RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDQE: 
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BI H. 0. HOOGQTON. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 
TO WORK AGAIN 7 

CHAPTER n. 

CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES ; WITH SOME THOUGHTS 

ON CURRENTS 19 

CHAPTER HI. 
CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS . . .45 

CHAPTER IV. 
GOING ON 72 

CHAPTER V. 
CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE . . .119 

CHAPTER VI. 
OUTSIDE 160 

CHAPTER VH. 
GETTING ON 183 

CHAPTER VIII. 

AT THE land's END 214 



vi CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 

PAGE 
CONCERNING RESIGNATION 232 

CHAPTER X. 
CONCERNING THINGS WHICH CANNOT GO ON . 255 

CHAPTER XI. 

CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING : WITH SOME 
THOUGHTS ON TAMPERING WITH THE COIN 
OF THE REALM 278 



CONCLUSION 317 



CHAPTER I. 



TO WORK AGAIN. 




F you had slept last night in any one of 
the row of houses which forms the north 
side of a certain street in a certain city, 
you would almost certainly have been 
wakened up a little before six o'clock this morning by 
a most dreadful squall, which was the culmination of 
a stormy night. It was quite dark. The rain was 
driven in bitter plashes against the windows. The 
windows rattled, the doors creaked, the very walls 
seemed to tremble, and there was a dismal howling 
in the chimneys. For though the street I have men- 
tioned has the city all round it, yet the ground on 
which it is built slopes so much, that the houses catch 
the unbroken force of the wind from the not distant 
sea. And from the upper windows, if you look to 
the north, beyond the gleam of a frith six miles in 
breadth, you may discern a range of hills, not far 
enough distant to seem blue. 

It was a time in which to remember those who are 
at sea ; and to be thankful that you were safe on shore. 



8 TO WORK AGAIN. 

But there is a further association with such a time, 
which would probably be present to the mind of many 
who in former days studied at a certain ancient Uni- 
versity which the writer will never cease to hold in 
affectionate remembrance. For this morning was one 
of the latest mornings of October ; and on the self- 
same morning in time, and on just such a morning for 
pleasantness, has many a student risen at six from his 
bed, that he might be present in the lecture-room, a 
mile and a half away, at half-past seven. On the pre- 
vious day, he had gone at a comfortable forenoon hour 
to the Common Hall of the University, and assisted 
at the ceremony of opening the session. The cere- 
mony was a simple one. Several hundreds of students, 
arrayed in gowns of flaming scarlet, assembled in that 
plain Hall ; and heard the Principal give a short ad- 
dress on academic dignity and duty. And if the stu- 
dent were one who had studied at the University in 
former sessions, he would be cheered up somewhat in 
the prospect of resuming his studies by the sight of 
some familiar and kindly faces. But that ceremony in 
the early forenoon was but the gentle introduction to 
college-work ; here is its stern reality. I am well 
aware that human beings in this world have often- 
times very dark and repulsive prospects to face, on 
rising from their beds in the morning ; and I could 
think of things so grave as awaiting wortliier men, 
that they make me almost ashamed to chronicle lesser 
trials. Yet I can say, from sorrowful experience, that 



TO WORK AGAIN. 9 

duty and work seldom look more gloomy and disheart- 
ening than they do to a student of that ancient Univer- 
sity of which the writer is an unworthy son, when he 
gets up in darkness and cold and hurricane ; and has- 
tens through mud and sleet along the gloomy streets 
to the lecture at half-past seven. 

One happy result follows. During all the re- 
mainder of his life, the man who for three lon2 
winters in succession, each beginning about the 
twenty-eighth of October, and reaching on till the 
end of April, has undergone that discipline, can 
never cease to have a special feeling of thankful- 
ness when on a morning of late October or early 
November he awakes at half-past five in the morn- 
ing, and hears the rain outside ; and then reflects 
that he need not get up and go out. The remem- 
brance of many mornings past may send a chill 
through his frame; and various worries and cares 
which must be faced at rising may painfully suggest 
themselves ; yet at least there is not that dismal 
rising before he has gathered heart to face the 
dreary day. 

Things which were very far from pleasant when 
they occurred, are sometimes very pleasant to look 
back on. I remember well how through months of 
over-work at College, anything but enjoyable while 
they passed over, I kept written on a piece of paper, 
always before my eyes, Virgil's line which says so. 
I can see it yet, in large letters on my table ; I used 



10 TO. WORK AGAIN. 

to look at it, in the silent house, at half-past three in 
the morning before going to bed, and to repeat it over 
when getting up wearily at half-past six again. For- 
sitan olim hcec meminisse juvahit : which was the 
graceful classic way of saying that there is a good 
time coming, and of advising sensible folk to wait a 
little longer. That time has come to the writer, and 
to many of his friends. We like to talk, when we 
meet, of the old days with their dismal mornings. It 
rejoiced me, between five and six this morning, to 
remember these things, and to feel the force of the 
anniversary. And now, when a new generation is 
gathering, on this very day, within the gloomy courts 
so w^ell remembered, the recollection does no worse 
than call up in the writer many thoughts of the varied 
ways in which men take to work again. Suffer me 
to say here, my friendly reader, May the City and 
the University flourish together ; according to the 
simple and straightforward wish of the pious burgh- 
ers who first inscribed the motto on the scutcheon of 
the ancient tow^i. And let me confess that I have 
already grown so old, that not without a certain mist 
that dims one's eyes, I can look on the crowd of lads 
and boys (for most of them are no more) in the Hall 
on the day of the opening of a session. You look 
back yourself, my friend ; and from a record, not far 
to seek, you are able to discern a little of the mis- 
takes, the follies, the rej)entances, the humiliations, 
the mortifications, the labors, the manifold takings- 



TO WORK AGAIN. 11 

down, which await those hopeful young fellows, before 
they are battered, rudely enough, into trim for sober 
life. The Duke of Wellington said that all war was 
a series of blunders ; it is not too much to say that 
blunders and repentances make up great part of the 
career of every mortal, especially in the days when 
he begins first to think for himself. 

The winter session, which is the only one of the 
year in that University which is not to be named 
here, begins, as has been said, about the twenty-sev- 
enth or twenty-eighth of October. The vacation has 
lasted since the first of the preceding May. It need 
not be said that, to the more industrious students, that 
long vacation is in great part given to diligent study ; 
yet it is always study to which your own sense of 
duty fixes the times and limits. Now, you begin to 
be under authority, and to have your task allotted -to 
you from day to day. And at this season, it is a 
curious thing to come from the country to that city. 
You pass at a step from autumn, still rich with color, 
into winter, gloomy and gray. In an inland country 
region, late October is often a charming time ; and 
the landscape has its own touching and even glowing 
beauty. Though many leaves have fallen, and make 
a dry rustle under your feet as you go through wood- 
land ways, yet many of the trees are thickly clad : 
some wonderfully green ; some touched by decay into 
beauty and glory, in the still sunshine of those beau- 
tiful days that come. And the dahlias and hollyhocks 



12 TO WORK AGAIN. 

are blazing ; for, as the season advances, the colors of 
nature deepen ; and the pale and delicate hues of the 
early snowdrops, primroses, and lilies pass through 
the gradation of summer blossoms and roses into the 
glow of the late autumn flowers. It is as gentle maid- 
enhood passes into blooming matronhood, with all its 
qualities more pronounced. And coming away from 
the country, at such a season, I dare say you have 
thought it still looking almost its best. But all these 
things are not, in the great city of tliat ancient Uni- 
versity. The leaves are gone ; all the country round 
is bare and bleak. The College-gardens, large and 
black-looking, are the most dismal scene that ever 
bore the pleasiint name. You will find no winding 
walks through thick masses of evergreens, wliich in 
winter rain or winter frost look so lifelike and warm 
and cheering. The trees, poor and stunted, are all 
deciduous ; and their leaves are not merely capable 
of falling, but have fallen in fact. The air is thick, 
and smoke abounds, — the smoke that makes the 
wealth of that wealthy city. And though you may 
be willing enough to set to work, and indeed rather 
weary of idleness or desultory study for some weeks 
past, you will probably confess that, even apart from 
the dismal lectures at half-past seven in the morning, 
it is rather a sad setting to work again. 

Let us be thankful, my friend, if our work be such, 
that, after some escape from it, we can take to it 
again cheerfully and willingly. When we read in 



TO WORK AGAIN. 13 

the newspapers about the reassembling of Parliament, 
the general effect conveyed to one's mind is a pleas- 
ant one. The impression left with us is that the 
members come back to their work willingly; they 
have been free from it so long that the appetite for 
the kind of thing has revived ; and each man rises 
that morning with a positive feeling of exhilaration as 
he looks on to the event of the day. It is not as 
it was with Napoleon, even when he was Emperor. 
You remember how he enjoyed his Saturday and Sun- 
day in the country quiet ; and how on Sunday night 
he was accustomed to say, thinking of his return 
next morning to Paris and the cares of state, " To- 
morrow I must put on the yoke of misery again." 
Many people, young and old, feel as Napoleon felt. 
There is the heart-sinking of the nervous little boy, 
going back to school after the holidays, with vague 
fears of evil. There is the apprehension of a great 
mercantile man, entering upon a season in which he 
foresees many painful difficulties and complications, 
and does not know how things may turn out. It is 
as with the little bark, which, from a sheltered nook 
where it was lying snug and safe, puts out unwillingly 
into the full fury of winds and waves. And even 
coming back to work which you like, and to which 
you thankfully feel yourself in some degree equal, 
there is a certain shrinking from putting the shoul- 
der to the collar again, and going stoutly at your task. 
There is a certain inertia, a certain nervous timidity, 



14 TO WORK AGAIN. 

to be overcome. You would like to quietly sit still 
where you are, and hide your head in a hole. 

You will feel this, I think, in coming back from 
your autumn holiday-time ; especially if you live and 
work in town. Human beings are never content. 
When you lived entirely in the country, it is very 
likely you used to think how pleasant and cheerful 
it would be to spend the dead months of the year in 
town ; and just as the season is darkening down to 
winter, and the country beginning to look bleak and 
desolate, to get in among the warm dwellings and 
multitudes of your fellow-men. But now, if your 
home be in the city, you probably think, about this 
season, how enjoyable a thing it is to stay on in the 
country still, watching the stages through which it 
passes into its winter aspect; feeling the weather so 
much nearer you, and so much a greater part of your 
life, than it is in the town ; looking for the days of 
the Martinmas summer, beautiful as any in all the 
year; waiting for the exhilaration of the frost, and 
the silence of the snow^ ; and finding a value in the 
dreariest aspect of fields and hills and roads, for the 
hearty thankfulness with which it teaches you to en- 
joy the warm fireside, and light and books and music. 
It is October tiiat gathers many men into town to 
work again, the yearly holidays over. And if you be 
a working man, who must earn your fomily's support 
by your labor, you may be pleased if you have had 
six weeks or two months of rest. If vou have been 



TO WORK AGAIN. 15 

away from work during the chief part of August and 
September, Nemesis might well be angry if you were 
to complain of coming back now as a hardship. Still 
you shrink a little. Nobody quite enjoys the idea of 
setting to work again ; unless, indeed, his vacation 
have been so long that it has ceased to be enjoyed as 
rest, and come to be felt merely as the misery of 
idleness. 

I suppose it is in human nature, that, after living for 
a while in a pleasant place, you should shrink from leav- 
ing it : many people find it costs them a painful effort to 
go away from their home ; but, once away, they can 
quite easily stay away a long time. Inertia is unques- 
tionably a property of mind as well as of matter. 
We don't like to move. Likely enough, my friend, in 
the autumn of this year, we have each been in half' 
a dozen places, in any one of which we should have 
been content to have stayed all our days. And though 
no one can be fonder of his duty than yourself, my 
friend, or more pleased with the place where God has 
cast your lot ; though it was a great strain and exer- 
tion to you to go away from both ; yet it was a consid- 
erable strain and exertion to rise and come back. 

Yes, it is a curious feeling you have, in coming 
away from any place which has been your home for 
even a short time ; and there are not many things, be- 
sides actual physical pain, to which it does not cost a 
little pang to say Good-by. The thoughtful reader 
has probably remarked how different a place looks 



16 TO WORK AGAIN. 

when you are coming away from it, from what it ever 
looked before. You observe, almost with a start, a 
great many little things and relations of things about 
it, which you never previously observed. All the 
familiar objects seem dumbly asking you to stay. 
And you must know the feehng by your own experi- 
ence before you can rightly understand it. You can- 
not evolve it, a priori, out of your own consciousness. 
You may try to imagine what it would be like ; but 
you cannot. Well does this writer remember how, in 
the days when he was a country clergyman, he used 
sometimes to pace up and down a certain little walk, 
every shrub by whose side had the look of an old 
friend ; and to wonder what the feeling would be, and 
what the place would look like, if he should ever go 
away from it. But in those days he never thought 
he would; and his imagination would not serve, him. 
And when the day, vaguely anticipated, came at last, 
every familiar holly and yew wore a new face ; and 
the aspect of the whole scene was one never beheld 
before. In a lesser degree, but still a very apprecia- 
ble degree, you feel all this in quitting a place where 
you have been staying for even six weeks. And you 
will be aware of a certain cheerlessness and desolate- 
ness, till your roots, thus torn up, get buried anew in 
the earth of your familiar home and its interests. 
Once fairly amid your own belongings and duties 
again, and you are all right. Your home seemed 
misty and unsubstantial while you were far away from 



TO WORK AGAIN. 17 

it ; but here it is again, real and warm, and with a 
general look of not unpleased recognition. And if 
you and I, my reader, in any degree deserve them, 
some kind looks and words of welcome, in the first 
busy days of somewhat confused occupation, may 
probably warm and cheer our spirit, and make us set 
with all the more hope and heart to work again. 

There is no pleasanter incident in the little history 
of this time of return to very arduous duty, than the 
sending out of these Essays, which have been written 
in months past, as some not unsalutary change of occu- 
pation from graver thoughts and labors. The writer 
trusts that they may fall into the right hands. Cer- 
tain volumes, which the friendly reader may know, 
have done so ; and have gained for the writer the 
approval of various wise and good men, whose ap- 
proval is to him among the most prized of earthly 
possessions. If these pages should fall into the hands 
of the man they do not suit, I hope he will not take 
the trouble of reading them ; he has but to close the 
volume, and they will worry him no more. But the 
people for whom the author writes will understand 
easily that these chapters contain thoughts which are 
not unconsidered, and which aim at something beyond 
the mere amusement of a vacant hour. 
' In closing a former volume, I said I hoped the 
chapters it contained might not be the last. And 
now I am very pleased and thankful that the wish 
2 



18 TO WORK AGAIN. 

has been indulged. It is but a little part of a life, 
devoted to the most solemn and the happiest of all 
work, that has been spared to these Essays. But 
they have found an audience vastly wider than the 
writer's voice could reach, or than will ever listen to 
his sermons. And believing what I like to believe, 
not in self-conceit, but in thankfulness, 1 receive and 
cherish the assurance of very many who have told me 
that the reading of these pages did some little good to 
them ; as the writing of these pages has done some 
little good to myself. 



CHAPTER II. 
CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES; 

WITH SOME THOUGHTS ON CURRENTS. 



AM not going to write an essay on Ven- 
tilation, important as that subject unques- 




any discussion of the various elements of 

I which the air we breathe is made up. I am aware, 

I indeed, that for the maintenance of animal and intellec- 

1 tual energy in their best state, it is expedient that the 

atmosphere should contain a certain amount of ozone ; 

i but what ozone is I do not know, and neither, I believe, 

! does any one else. And on the matter of material cur- 

j rents, whether ocean currents, atmospheric currents, or 

j river currents, I am not competent to afford the scien- 

I tific reader much information. I know, indeed, as 

I most people know, that it is well for Britain that the 

warm Gulf Stream sets upon our shores. I read in 

the newspapers how bottles thrown into the sea turn 

up in distant and surprising places. I am aware that 

the Trade Winds blow steadily from west to east. 



20 CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 

And I have sat tranquilly, and looked intently at the 
onward flow of streams; from the slow and smooth 
canal-like river that silently steals on through the rich 
level English landscape, to the wild Highland torrent 
that tears down its rocky bed, in white foam and 
thunder. 

But what I wish, my reader, that you and I should 
do at present, is to take a large view of the case, not 
needing any special knowledge of physical science. 
Let us remember just this, that the atmosphere in 
which we live is something that touches and affects U3 
at every inch of our superficies, and at every moment 
of our life. It is not to say merely that we breathe 
it ; but that it exerts upon every part of us, inner and 
outer, an influence which never ceases, and which, 
though possibly not much marked at the time, produces 
in the long run a very great and decided effect. You 
draw in the air from ague-laden fens, and you do not 
find anything very particular in each breath you draw. 
But breathe tJuit^ and live in that, for a few weeks or 
months, and see what will come to you. Or you go 
in the autumn, weak and weary with the season's work 
and worry, jaded and nervous, to the sea-side, and the 
bracing atmosphere in a little while insensibly does its 
work ; your limbs grow strong and active again, and 
your mind grows energetic and hopeful. And you 
have doubtless felt for yourself how the heavy, smoky 
air of a large city makes you dull and stupid, and how 
the sparkling draughts you draw in of the keen, un- 



COXCEBXING A'OIOSPHEEES. 21 

breathed air of the mountains, exhilarate and nerve 
anew. And as for currents, without going into de- 
tails, we know this general fact : If you cast a floating 
thing ujx»n a current, it will insensibly go along with 
the current There may not be a stronger or a more 
perceptible push at one moment than at another ; but 
there is an influence which in the main is uncea-ing, 
and there is a general drifting away. Slowly, slowly, 
the log cast into the sea, out in the middle of the At- 
lantic, comes eastward, week by week, till it is thrown 
somewhere on the outer coast of Ireland or of the 
, Hebrides. And when the thing cast upon the current 
' is more energetic than a log, still the current aflfects it 
none the less really. The Mississippi steamer breasts 
that great turbid stream, and makes way against it ; 
( but it makes way slowly. Let the engines cease to 
work, and the steamer drifts as the log drifted. Or 
' let the engines work as before, and the vessel's head 
be turned down the stream ; and then, going with the 
current, its speed is doubled. 

Xow, the atmosphere I mean in this essay is the 
j atmosphere in which the soul hves and breathes ; and 
j the currents, those which carry along the moral and 
j' spiritual nature to developments better or worse. 
I Shall we say it, for the most part to worse ? In this 
; world, in a moral sense, we generally drift towards 
evil, if we drift at all. You must warp up the stream 
I if you would advance towards good. It seems to be 
j God's purpose that anything good must be attained by 



22 CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 

effort : if you slothfully go with the current, it will be 
only to ill. 

I am not able, just now, to give you a definition of 
either moral atmospheres or moral currents which satis- 
fies me. You will gradually see my meaning, if you 
do not see it yet. Let it be said, generally, that to fol- 
low inclination within, or to yield to the vague influ- 
ence of the things and people around you, is to drift 
with the moral current. And sensitively to feel the 
moral influences amid which you live — the moral 
influences arising from external nature, or from the 
dwelling in which you live, or from the people M'ith 
whom you associate, or from the books and news- 
papers and magazines and reviews you read — is to 
feel the moral atmosphere. And a very great part of 
the influence which moulds human character, and de- 
cides human destiny, is of this vague, yet pervading 
kind. A tree, I am told, draws the chief part of its 
nourishment from the air, — very much more than it 
draws from the earth through its roots. The tree 
must have roots, or it would not live or grow at all ; 
yet the multitude of leaves draw in that by which it 
mainly lives and grows. And it seems to me to be so 
with human beings. We must be morally rooted and 
grounded, as it were, by direct education, and by di- 
rectly getting principles fixed in our minds. But after 
this is done, we mainly take our tone from the moral 
atmosphere. We are mainly affected by moral cur- 
rents ; and just as really when we strive against them 
as when we yield to them. 



CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 23 

I am sure you know that a great many of the things 
we read — books, periodicals, and the hke — affect us 
not so much by the ideas they convey, as by the gen- 
eral atmosphere with which they surround us. If you 
read, week by week, a clever, polished, cynical, heart- 
less publication, it will do you harm insensibly ; it will 
mould and color your ways of thinking and feeling 
much more than you would think. You like its talent, 
you know : but you disapprove, sometimes very keenly, 
its general character and tone ; and you think you are 
so on your guard against these, inwardly protesting 
against them each time you feel them, that no effect 
will be produced by them upon you. You are mis- 
taken in thinking so. You breathe and live in a moral 
atmosphere, wliich is quite sure to tell on you. You 
are cast on a current ; and it needs constant pulling 
against it to keep you from drifting with it. And your 
moral nature is not (so to speak) ever on the stretch 
with the oars ; ever in an attitude of resistance to the 
malaria. Yes ; that clever, heartless, cynical paper 
will leave its impress on you by degrees. And on the 
other side, you know that the influence of writings 
which are not obtrusively instructive, may sink gently 
into our nature and do us much good. There is not 
much formal teaching in them ; but as you read them, 
you feel you are breathing a general healthy atmos- 
phere ; you are aware of a quiet but decided and 
[)owerful current, setting steadily towards what is 
good and magnanimous and true. 



24 CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 

No doubt, friendly reader, you feel that what I have 
said is just. In talking to people, in living in places, 
in reading books, you feel the atmosphere ; you are 
aware of the current. I do not speak to people whose 
moral nature is callous as the hide of the rhinoceros, 
and who never feel the moral atmosphere at all. You 
might endeavor to prick a rhinoceros with a pin for 
some time without awaking any sensation in that ani- 
mal. And there are human beings who, it is quite 
evident from their conversation and their doings on 
various occasions, are as little sensitive to the moral 
atmosphere, and the laws and proprieties w'hich arise 
out of it, as the rhinoceros is to the very bluntest pin. 
They are not aware of any influence weaker than a 
physical push ; as you remember the man who would 
take no hint less marked than a kicking. But you 
know, my friend, that in talking to different people, 
you insensibly take your tone from them ; and you 
talk in a way accommodated to the particular case. 
There are people to whom, unawares, and without 
purpose prepense, you find yourself talking in a loud, 
lively manner, which is far from your usual one. 
There are others to whom you insensibly speak in a 
quiet, thoughtful way. And you cannot help this ; 
it is just that you feel the atmosphere, and yield to it. 
It is as when you go out on a crisp frosty day, and 
without any special intention to that effect, find your- 
self walking smartly and briskly along. But if it be a 
still, sunshiny October afternoon, amid the brown and 



CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 25 

golden woods, you will unconsciously accommodate 
yourself to the surroundings : you will (if there be no 
special call for haste) walk pensively and slow. Now, 
some may unjustly fancy, as they remark how differ- 
ent your demeanor is in the society of different people, 
that you are an impostor, — a hypocrite, — not to say 
a humbug ; that you are falsely assuming a manner 
foreign to your own, that you may suit the different 
people with whom you converse. It is not so. There 
is no design in what you do. You are not desiring to 
please the loud man by assuming a loud manner, re- 
flecting his ; as I have heard of some one who was 
regarded as having paid a delicate but effective com- 
pliment to a great man who wore a very odd waistcoat, 
by presenting himself in the presence of the great 
man, clad in a waistcoat exactly like his own. There 
is nothing of that kind ; nothing insincere ; nothing 
flunkeyish. It is only that you have a sensitive na- 
ture, which feels the atmosphere in which it is placed 
for the time. You know how mercury in frost feels 
the cold, and shrinks ; it cannot help it. Then in 
warm weather it expands by the necessity of its na- 
ture. It always appeared to me in my childhood that 
Dr. Watts effectually justifies the most offensive de- 
portment on the part of dogs, by suggesting that it is 
their Maker's intention they they should exhibit such 
a deportment. There is a passage, not much known, 
in a lyric by that poet, which runs to the effect: "Let 
dogs delight to bark and bite, for God has made them 



26 CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 

so." If the fact be admitted, the principle is sound ; 
but as judicious disciphne can greatly diminish the 
tendency of these animals to bark and bite, I doubt 
whether the words of Dr. Watts are to be construed 
in their full meaning. But there can be no question 
that mercury, which is a substance not accessible to 
moral considerations, deserves neither blame nor praise 
for expanding and shrinking according to its natui-e. 
And while I admit that any doings of human beings, 
partaking of a moral element, are (in the main) so 
under the control of the will, that the human beings 
may justly be held responsible for them, I hold that 
this sensitiveness to the moral atmosphere is very 
much a matter of original constitution, and that the 
man who feels it may fairly plead that his Maker 
"made him so." And very many people — shall we 
say the most exquisitely constituted of the race? — 
discern the moral atmosphere which surrounds some 
men by a delicate and unerring intuition. There are 
men who bring with them a frosty atmosphere ; there 
are men who bring a sunshiny. You know people 
whose stilFness of manner freezes up the frankest and 
most genial. You know there are people to whom you 
would no more think of talking of the things which 
interest you most, than you would think of talking to 
a horse ; or, let us say, to a donkey. Do you suppose 
that I sliould show my marked copy of 7/^ Memoriam 
to either my friend Dr. Log, or my friend Mr. Snarl- 
ing ? 



CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 27 

I dare say some of my readers, going to see an ac- 
quaintance, have walked into his study, and found 
themselves, physically, in a choky, confined, hot-house 
atmosphere. And on entering into conversation with 
the man in the study they have found, morally, the 
same thing repeated. The moral atmosphere was just 
the physical over again. You remember the morbid 
views, the uncharitable judgments, the despondency 
of tone. And I think your inward exclamation was, 
Oh, for fresh air, physically and morally ! And, indeed, 
I can hardly believe that sound and healthy judgments 
are ever come to, or that manly and truthful thoughts 
are produced, except when the physical atmosphere is 
pure and healthful. I would not attach much im- 
portance to the vote, upon some grave matter of prin- 
ciple, which is come to by an excited mob of even 
educated men, at four o'clock in the morning, in an 
atmosphere so thoroughly pestilential that it might 
knock a man down. And there are houses, on enterins 
which you feel directly the peculiar moral atmosphere. 
It is oppressive. It catches your throat ; it gets into 
your lungs ; it (morally) puts a bad taste into your 
mouth. There are dv/ellings which, even in a physical 
sense, seem never to have fresh air thoroughly admit- 
ted ; never to have the lurking malaria that hangs in 
corners and about window-curtains thoroughly cleared 
out, and the pure fresh air of heaven let in to fill 
every inch of space. There are more dwellings where 
this is so in a moral sense. You enter such a dwell- 



28 CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 

ing ; you talk to the people in it. You at once feel 
oppressed. You feel stupid ; worse than that, you 
feel sore and cantankerous. You feel you are grow- 
ing low-minded. Anything like magnanimity or gen- 
erosity goes out of you. You listen to wretched sneers 
against everything that is good or elevating. You 
find a series of miserable little doings and misdoings 
dwelt upon with weary iteration and bitter exaggera- 
tion. You hear base motives suggested as having 
really prompted the best people you know to their 
best doings. Did you ever spend an evening in the 
society of a cynical, sneering man, with some measure 
of talent and energy ? You remember how you heard 
anything noble or disinterested laughed at ; how you 
heard selfish motives ascribed to everybody ; how some 
degrading association was linked with everything pure 
and excellent. Did you not feel deteriorated by that 
evening ? Did you not feel that (morally) you were 
breathing the atmosphere of a sewer or a pigsty ? 
And even when the atmosphere was not so bad as 
that, you have known the houses of really excellent 
folk, which were pervaded by such a stiffness, such an 
unnatural repression of all natural feeling, such a sense 
of constraint of soul, that wlien you fairly got out of 
the house at last, you would have liked to express 
your relief, and to give way to your pent-up energies, 
by wildly dancing on the pavement before the door 
like a Red Indian. And, indeed, you might very 
probably have done so, but for the dread of the po- 



CONCEHNING ATMOSl'IlEHES. . 29 

lice ; and for the fear that, even through the dark, 
you might be discerned by the eyes of Mrs. Grundy. 
Some people are so energetic and so much in ear- 
nest, that they diffuse about them an atmosphere which 
is keenly felt by most men. And it often happens 
that you are very much affected by the moral in- 
fluence of people, from almost all whose opinions you 
differ. I have no doubt that human beings who differ 
from Dr. Arnold and Mr. Hughes on almost every 
point of belief, have been greatly influenced, and in- 
fluenced for the better, by these good men. There is 
something in the atmosphere that breathes from both 
of them that tends to higher and purer ways of think- 
ing and feeiinof ; that tends to make you act more 
constantly from principle, and to make you feel the 
solemnity of this life. And without supposing any 
special good fortune in the case of the reader, I may 
take for granted that you have known two or three 
persons whose presence you felt like a constant rebuke 
to anything mean or wrong in thought or deed, and 
like a constant stimulus to things good and worthy. 
You have known people, in the atmosphere of whose 
influence the evil in your nature seemed cowed and 
abashed. It seemed to die out like a nettle in frost ; 
that clear, brisk, healthy atmosphere seemed to kill it. 
And you may have known men, after reading whose 
pages, or listening to whose talk, you felt more of 
kindly charity towards all your brethren in the help- 
lessness and sinfulness of humanity. Of course, to 



30 CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 

diffuse a powerful influence, whether towards evil or 
good, a man must possess great force and earnestness 
of character. Ordinary mortals are like the chame- 
leon, wliich takes something of the color of any strong- 
colored object it is placed near. They take their tone 
very much from the more energetic folk with whom 
they are placed in contact. I dare say you have known 
a man who powerfully influences for good the whole 
circle of men that surrounds him. Such a one must 
have a vast stock of vital and moral energy. Most 
people are like the electric eel, very much exhausted 
after having given forth their influence. A few are 
like an electric battery, of resources so vast that it can 
be pouring out its energy without cease. There are 
certain physical characteristics which often, though 
not always, go with this moral characteristic. It is 
generally found in connection with a loud, manly 
voice, a burly figure, a very frank address. Not al- 
ways, indeed ; there have been puny, shrinking, silent 
men, who mightily swayed their fellow-men, whether 
to evil or to good. But in the presence of the stronger 
physical nature, you feel something tending to make 
you feel cheerful, hopeful, energetic. I have known 
men who seemed always surrounded by a healthy, 
bracing atmosphere. When with such, I defy you to 
feel down-hearted, or desponding, or slotliful. Tiiey 
put new energy, hopefulness, and life into you. Yes, 
my reader, perhaps you have found it for yourself, 
that to gain the friendship of even one energetic, 



CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 31 

thoughtful, good man, may suffice to give a new and 
healthier tone to your whole life. Yes, the influence 
of such a one may insensibly reach through all you 
think, feel, and do ; as the material atmosphere per- 
vades all material things. And such an influence 
may be exerted either through a fiery energy, or by 
an undefinable, gentle fascination. I believe that 
most men felt the first of these, who knew much of 
Dr. Chalmers. I beheve that many have felt the 
second of these, in their intercourse with Dr. Newman 
or Mr. Jowett. Possibly, we might classify mankind 
under two divisions : the little band whose pith or 
whose fascination is such that they give the tone, 
good or bad ; that they diffuse the atmosphere ; and 
the larger host, whose soul is receptive rather than 
diffusive ; the great multitude of human beings who 
take the tone, feel the atmosphere, and go with the 
current. It is probable that a third class ought to 
be added, including those who never felt anything, 
particularly, at all. 

When you first enter a new moral atmosphere, you 
feel it very keenly. But you grow less sensitive to 
it daily, as you become accustomed to it. It may be 
producing its moral effect as really ; but you are not 
so much aware of its presence. Did you ever go to a 
place new to you, of very unusual and striking aspect ; 
and did you wonder if people there lived just as they 
do in the commonplace scenes amid which you live ? 
Let me confess that I cannot look at the pictures of 



32 CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 

the quaint old towns of Belgium, without vaguely ask- 
ing myself that question. In a lesser degree, the fancy 
steals in, even as one walks the streets of Oxford or 
of Chester. You feel how fresh and marked an at- 
mosphere you breathe, in a visit of a few days' length 
to either town. But of course, if you live in the 
strangest place for a long time, you will find that life 
there is very much what life is elsewhere. I have 
often thought that I should like to do my in-door 
work in a room whose window opened upon the sea ; 
so close to the sea that looking out you might have 
the waves lapping on the rock fifteen feet below you ; 
and that when you threw the window up, the salt 
breeze might come into the chamber, a little feverish 
perhaps with several toiling hours. Surely, *! think, 
some influence from the scene would miagle itself 
with all that one's mind would there produce. And 
it would be curious to look out, before going to bed, 
far over the level surface in the moonlight : to see the 
spectral sails passing in the distance ; and to hear the 
never-ceasing sound, old as Creation. I do not know 
that the reader will sympathize with me ; but I should 
like very much to live for a week or two at the Eddy- 
stone Light-house. There would be a delightful sense 
of quiet. There would be no worry. There would 
be plenty of time to think. It would be absolutely 
certain that the door-bell would never ring. And 
though there would be but limited space for exercise, 
there would unquestionably be the freshest and purest 



CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 33 

of air. No doubt if the wind rose at evening, you 
might through the night feel the light-house vibrate 
with the blow of the waves ; but you could recall all 
you had read of the magnificent engineering of Smea- 
ton ; and feel no more than the slight sense of danger 
which adds a zest. I am aware that in a little while 
one would get accustomed to the whole mode of life. 
The flavor of all things goes with custom. When 
you go back to the sea-side, how salt the breeze tastes, 
which you never remarked while you were living 
there ! And sometimes, looking back, you will wish 
you could revive the freshness and vividness of first 
impressions. 

We have been thinking of the atmosphere difl^used 
by books and by persons ; let it be said that the thing 
about a book which affects your mind and character 
most, is not its views or arguments ; it is its atmos- 
phere. And it is so also with persons. It is not what 
people expressly advise you that really sways you ; 
it is the general influence that breathes from all their 
life. A book may, for instance, set out sound religious 
\ iews ; but in such a hard cold way that the book will 
repel 'from religion. That is to say, the arguments 
may push one way, and the atmosphere the opposite 
way ; and the atmosphere will neutralize the argu- 
ments and something more. And you will find peo- 
ple, too, whose advices and counsels are good ; who 
often counsel their children or their friends to duty, 



34 CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 

and to earnestness in religion : but who neutralize 
and reverse the bearing of all these good counsels by 
the entire tone of their life. The words of some peo- 
ple say, Choose the good parr, Ask for the best of all 
guidance and influence day by day ; but their atmos- 
phere says, Anything for money, — for social stand- 
ing, — for spitefulness, — for general unpleasantness. 
You will find various Pharisees nowadays who loudly 
exclaim, " God be merciful to me a sinner ; " but woe 
betide you, if you venture to hint to such that anything 
they can do is wrong ! 

Let me say, that you may read and you may hear 
religious instruction, which without asserting anything 
expressly wrong, still deteriorates you. It lowers you ; 
you are the worse for it. There is an undefinable, 
but strongly-felt lack of the Christian spirit about it. 
Its views are mainly right ; but somehow its atmos- 
phere is wrong. I do not say this in any narrow 
spirit : it is not against one party of rehgionists more 
than another that I should bring this charge. Per- 
haps the teaching which is soundest in doctrine, is 
sometimes the most useless, through its want of the 
true Christian life ; or through merely giving you the 
metaphysics of Christianity, without any real bring- 
ing of the vital truths of Christianity home to the 
heart, and to the actual case of those to whom they 
are told. I have read a book, — a polished, scholarly 
tale, the leading character in which was a clergyman 
— but in reading the book you felt a strong smack 



CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 35 

of heathenism. I do not mean the savage, cannibal 
heathenism which still exists in the islands of the 
South Pacific ; but the polished heathenism which 
was many centuries since in Greece and Rome. The 
clergyman was sound in dogma, I dai*e say, if you had 
asked him for a confession of his faith ; but his Chris- 
tianity was ah outside garment, while his whole na- 
ture was saturated with the old literature and mythol- 
ogy of that ancient day. Then you may find a book, 
a religious book, containing nothing on which you 
could well put your finger as wrong : yet you were 
left with a general impression of scepticism. That 
was the atmosphere. The views and arguments are 
as the solid ground : but you touch the solid ground 
but at a single point ; — the circumambient ether is 
all around you, and within you. I have read pages 
setting out somewhat sad and discouraging views ; yet 
as you turned the pages, you were aware of a general 
atmosphere of hopefulness and energy. And I have 
listened to what might have made pages, if it had 
been printed (pages which assuredly I should not 
have read), setting out the sublimest and most glo- 
rious hopes of humanity, in a way so dreary, dull, 
wearisome, and stupid, that the atmosphere was most 
depressing. You felt as though you were environed 
by a damp, thick fog. 

It would be an endless task to reckon up the moral 
atmospheres in which human beings live ; or even 



36 CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 

the moral atmospheres which you yourself, my friend, 
have breathed. But there are some that one remem- 
bers vividly ; they did not come often enough, or con- 
tinue long enough, to lose their freshness. Such is 
the atmosphere which surrounds all operations relat- 
ing to the sale and purchase of horses. You remem- 
ber how, when you went to buy one of those noble 
animals, you found yourself surrounded by a new 
and strongly-flavored phase of life. Was there not a 
general atmosphere as of swindling ? You were sur- 
prised to hear lies, the gross'est, told, even though 
they were sure to be instantly detected. You felt 
that your ignorance and capacity of being cheated 
were being gauged with great skill. It is a singular 
thing, indeed, that one of the most useful and beauti- 
ful of God's creatures should diffuse around him a 
most unhealthy moral atmosphere. You may have 
remarked that the noble steed is not merely sur- 
rounded by an ether filled with falsehoods ; but that 
a less irritating, though still remarkable, ingredient, 
mingles with it, like ozone — it is the element of 
slang. I have remarked this with great interest, and 
mused much on it without succeeding in satisfactorily 
accounting for it. Why is it that to say a horse is a 
good horse should stamp you as a green hand ; but 
that to say the animal is no bad nag, or a fairish 
style of hack, should convey the idea that you know 
various things ? And wherefore should it be, that a 
shallow nature should be indicated by your saying 



CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 37 

you were willing to pay fifty pounds for the horse, 
while untold depth and craft shall be held to be im- 
plied by the statement that your tether was half a 
hundred ? 

A very disagreeable atmosphere, diffused by vari- 
ous persons, is that of suspicion. Some one has done 
you a kind turn, and your heart warms to the doer 
of it. But Mr. Snarhng comes in ; and you tell him, 
in hearty tones, of the kind turn, and of your warm 
feeling towards the man that did it. Mr. Snarling 
doubts, hints, insinuates, suggests a deep and trai- 
torous design under that kind act ; perhaps succeeds 
in chilling or souring your warm feeling ; till, on the 
withdrawal of the unhealthy atmosphere, your better 
nature gets the upperhand again. And when next 
you meet the kind, open face of the friend who did 
you the kind turn, your heart smites you as you think 
whatti wicked suspicious creature you were while with- 
in the baleful atmosphere of Snarling. You have seen, 
I dare say, very shallow and empty individuals, who 
fancied that it made them look deep and knowing, to 
say that beggars, for the most part, live in great lux- 
ury, and have money in the bank. That may be so 
in rare cases ; but I know that the want of the poor 
is often very real. It comes, doubtless, in some meas- 
ure, from their own sin or improvidence ; and as, of 
course, you and I never do wrong, let us throw a 
very large stone at the poor creature who is starving 
to-day, because she took a full meal of bread and but- 



38 CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 

ter and tea four days since. I have heard a man, 
with great depth of look, state that a certain cripple 
known to me could walk quite well. I asked the 
man for his authority. He had none, but vague sus- 
picion. I told the man, with some acerbity (which I 
do not at all regret), that I knew the poor man well, 
and that 1 knew he was as crippled as he seemed. It 
looks knowing to declare of some poor starved crea- 
ture that he is more rogue than fool. Whenever you 
hear that said, my reader, always ask what is the pre- 
cise charge intended to be conveyed, and ask the 
ground on which the charge is made. In most cases 
you will get no answer to the second question ; in 
very many no intelligible answer to the first. It 
would be a pleasant world to live in, if the people 
who dwell in it were such as they are represented 
by several persons known to me. I remember an 
outspoken old Scotch lady, to whom I was offering 
some Christian comfort after a great loss. I remem- 
ber how she said, with a look as if she meant it, " If 
I did not believe all that, I should take a knife and 
cut my throat ! " It was an honest confession of her 
faith, though made in unusually energetic terms. And 
I might say for myself, if I had not some faith in my 
race, it would be better to be off to the wilderness 
at once, or, like Timon, to the desolate shore. The 
wants of beggars, even of the least deserving, are, for 
the most part, very real. As for their luxuries, they 
are generally tea and buttered toast. Sometimes fried 



CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 39 

bam may also be found. Poor creatures ! Tbese 
things are the only enjoyments they have ; and I, for 
one, am not ready with my anathema maranatha. I 
have known very suspicious and uncharitable persons 
who were extremely fat ; doubtless they lived en- 
tirely on parched peas. And all the sufferings of 
the poor are not shams, paraded to the end of ob- 
taining pence. I look back now, over a good many 
years, to the time when I was a youth at college. I 
remember coming home one night, between eleven 
and twelve o'clock, along a quiet street in a certain 
great city. I remember two poor girls standing in 
the shelter of the wall of a house, leaning against the 
wall, from the drenching rain. Neither noticed me. 
I see yet the deadly white face of one, — the hag- 
gard, sick look, as she crouched by the wall, and leant 
on the other's shoulder, as if just recovering from a 
faint. I hear yet the anxious, despairing voice with 
which the other said to her, " Are you better now ? " 
The words were not spoken at me, or spoken for the 
ear of any passer-by. All this was on the dark mid- 
night street, amid the drenching rain. It was a little 
thing; but it brought home to one the suffering that 
is quietly undergone in thousands of places over Eu- 
rope each day and night. 

Probably you have known people who were placed 
in a sphere where the atmosphere, moral and physical, 
was awfully depressing. They did their work poorly 
enough ; and many blamed them severely. For my- 



40 CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 

self, I was inclined to wonder that they did so well. 
Who could be a good preacher in certain churches of 
which I have known ? I think there are few men 
more sensitive to the moral atmosphere than the 
preacher. There are churches in which there is a 
hearty atmosphere ; others, in which there is a chilly 
atmosphere ; others, with a bitter, narrow-minded, 
Pharisaic ; others, with an atmosphere which com- 
bines the pragmatic, critical, and self-sufficient, with 
the densely stupid. But passing from this, I say that 
most men, even of those who do their work in life de- 
cently well, have only energy enough to do well if you 
give them a fair chance. And many have not a fair 
chance ; some have no chance at all. There are hu- 
man beings set in a moral atmosphere in which moral 
energy and alacrity could no more exist than phj'sical 
life in the choke-damp of the mine. Be thankful, my 
friend, if you are placed in a fairly healthful atmos- 
phere. You are doing fairly in it ; but in a different 
one you might have pined and died. You are leading 
a quiet Christian life, free from great sin or shame. 
Well, be thankful ; but do not be conceited ; above 
all, do not be uncharitable to those for whom the race 
and the warfare have been too much. 

I have said that it is the more energetic of the race 
that diffuse a moral atmosphere ; the ordinary mem- 
bers of the race feel it. The energetic give the tone ; 
the ordinary take it. There are minds whose nature 
is to give out ; and minds whose nature is to take in. 



CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 41 

But most men have energy enough, if riglilly directed, 
to affect the air somewhat ; and though the moral 
ingredient they yield may not be much in quantity, it 
may be able to supply just the precious ozone. Let 
! us try to be like the sunshiny member of the family, 
who has the inestimable art to make all duty seem 
pleasant ; all self-denial and exertion, easy and desira- 
ble ; even disappointment not so blank and crushing ; 
who is like a bracing, crisp, frosty atmosphere through- 
. out the home, without a suspicion of the element that 
j chills and pinches. You have known people within 
I whose influence you felt cheerful, amiable, hopeful, 
' equal to anything ! Oh, for that blessed power, and 
for God's grace to exercise it rightly ! I do not know 
j a more enviable gift than the energy to sway others 
! to good ; to diffuse around us an atmosphere of cheer- 
fulness, piety, truthfulness, generosity, magnanimity. 
I It is not a matter of great talent ; not entirely a mat- 
ter of great energy ; but rather of earnestness and 
j honesty, — and of that quiet, constant energy which 
! is like soft rain gently penetrating the soil. It is 
I rather a grace than a gift ; and we all know where 
I all grace is to be had freely for the asking. 

I You see, my reader, I have spoken of atmospheres 

i and currents together. For every moral atmosphere 

! is of the nature of a moral current. As you breathe 

the atmosphere, you feel that there is an active force 

in it ; that you are beginning to drift away. It is not 



42 CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 

merely a present sense of something that comes over 
you ; but you know that it sets you floating onward to 
something beyond your present feeling. The more 
frequent tendency of a moral atmosphere is to assimi- 
late your moral nature to itself. Perhaps all atmos- 
pheres, if you live in them long enough, tend to this. 
But there are some atmospheres which, just at first, 
are so very disagreeable, that their effect is repellent ; 
they tend to make you wish to be just as different from 
themselves as you can. But the refined person, at first 
revolted by a rude and coarse atmosphere, will, in years, 
grow subdued to it ; and the pure young soul, shocked 
and disgusted at the first approach of gross sin, comes at 
last to bear it and to exceed it. Yes, the ultimate ten- 
dency of all moral atmospheres upon all ordinary peo- 
ple, is to assimilate them to the element in which they 
live. Let men breathe any atmosphere long enough, 
and this will follow ; save in the case of an excep- 
tional man here and there. It is a very bad thing for 
a young person to be much among thoroughly worldly 
people, or among mere money-making people. Let 
us not cry down money ; it is a great and powerful 
thing. You remember, it was not money, but the over 
love of money, that was *'the root of all evil." But 
it is most unhappy to live among those from whose en- 
tire ways of thinking and talking you get the general 
impression, that money is the first and best thing ; 
and that the great end of life is to obtain it ; and that 
almost any means may be resorted to for that end. 



CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 43 

All this is not said in so many words ; but it pervades 
you unseen ; you breathe it like an unwholesome 
malaria. You take it in, not merely at every breath, 
but at every pore. And the result of years of this 
i is, that the warm-hearted, generous youth grows into 
the sordid, heartless old man ; and that the enthu- 
siastic young Christian is sometimes debased into a 
1 very chilly, lifeless, and worldly middle age. 
j And now, before I end, you must let me say this. 
' And when I say it upon this page (which never formed 
I any part of a sermon) you will know that I say it not 
! because I think I must, but because I honestly believe 
j it. There is a certain blessed influence which can 
I mingle itself with every moral atmosphere that a hu- 
I man being can honestly breathe ; and which can make 
I every such atmosphere healthful. You know what I 
( mean. It is the influence of that Holy Spirit, whose 
i presence the Redeemer said was more valuable and 
profitable than even His own ; and who is promised 
without reservation to all who heartily ask His pres- 
ence. And you know, too, that we have a sure 
promise, that if we build on the right foundation, the 
current of our whole life will tend towards what is 
happy and good. There may be a little eddy back- 
wards here and there, and sometimes what seems a 
pause, but it is in the direction of these things that the 
whole current sets; it is towards these that "all things 
work together." I firmly believe that the natural ten- 
dency of all moral currents, apart from God's grace, is 



44 CONCERNING ATMOSPHERES. 

downwards. Apart from that, we shall always grow 
worse ; with it, we shall always grow better. Believe 
me, my reader, when I say, that if all our life and all 
our lot be not hallowed by the presence in all of the 
Blessed Spirit, we may be sure that we are breathing 
a moral atmosphere which wants just the precious 
ozone that is needful to true health and life. And if 
we have not, penitently and humbly, confided ourselves 
to our Saviour, we may know that we are driftino- 
with a current which is certainly bearing us on tow- 
ards all that is evil and all that is woful. It is sad 
to see the poor little pale and sickly children of some 
dark, stifling close in a large city ; poor little things 
who never breathe the free country air; who are 
living in an unwholesome atmosphere within doors 
and without, in which they are pining, and growing up 
weak and nerveless ; but it is more sad to see the im- 
mortal soul stunted, emaciated, and distorted, through 
the unhealthy moral air it breathes. It must have 
been a miserable sight, the little boat with the man in 
it asleep, drifting smoothly and swiftly along, beyond 
human reach, towards the tremendous cataract ; but it 
is more miserable, if we saw it rightly, to see a human 
soul, in spiritual sleep, drifting day by day towards the 
fearful plunge into final woe. Let us pray, my reader, 
for both of us ; that God would be with us by His 
Spirit, and keep us in all ways that we go ; that in all 
our life we may breathe the Atmosphere of His pres- 
ence ; and by the Current of all our life be brought 
nearer to Himself! 



CHAPTER III. 



CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 




^^VERYTHING in this world has a Be- 
ginning and an End. 

After writing that sentence, which (as 
you see) sets forth a great general prin- 
1 ciple, I stopped for some time, to consider whether it 
, holds always true. As one grows older, one grows 
I always more cautious as to general principles. My 
' young friend, when you are arguing any question with 
, an acute opponent, you should, as a rule, never assent 
to any general principle which he may state. He 
I may ask you, with an indignant air, Don't you admit 
' that two and two make four ? Let your answer be, 
I No, I admit nothing, till I see how it touches the mat- 
ter which concerns us at present. You do not know 
what may be involved in the admission sought ; or 
I what may follow from it. The most innocent-looking 
. general principle may lead to the most appalling 
consequences. The general principle which appears 
most unquestionably true, may prove glaringly false in 
I some very ordinary case. You should request time 



46 CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 

for consideration before you admit any axiom in 
morals, metaphysics, or politics ; or you should ask 
your adversary what he means to build upon it, before 
you can say either yes or no to it. Do as the Scotch 
judges do when a difficult case has been argued before 
them. I discover from the newspapers that they are 
wont to say, that they will take such a case to avizan- 
dum : which I suppose (no one ever told me) means 
that they must think twice, or even oftener, before de- 
ciding a matter like that. 

I have taken the general principle, already stated, 
to avizandum. It seems all right. But I remember, 
in thinking of it, at how great advantage a judge is 
placed, in trying to come to a sound decision. Very 
clever and well-informed men state the arguments on 
either side. And all the judge has to do, is to say 
which arguments seem to him the strongest. He has 
no fear that any have been overlooked. But a human 
being, weighing a general principle, must act as coun- 
sel on each side, as well as judge. He must call up 
before his mind, all that is to be said ibr and against 
it ; as well as say whether the weightiest reasons 
make for or against. And he may quite overlook 
some important reason, on one side or other. He 
may quite forget something so obvious and familiar 
that a child might have remembered it. Or he may 
fail to discern that some consideration which mainly 
decides his judgment is open to a fatal objection, 
which every one can see is fatal the instant it is 



CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 47 

stated. Was it not Sir Isaac Newton, who had a pet 
cat and kitten ? And did not these animals annoy 
hira while busy in his study, by frequently expressing 
their desire to be let out and in ? The happy thought 
■■ struck hira, that he might save himself the trouble of 
often rising to open his study-door for their passage, 
by providing a way that should always be practicable 
• for their exit or entrance. And accordingly the great 
man cut in his door a large hole for the cat to go out 
and in, and a small hole for the kitten. He failed to 
I remember, what the stupidest bumpkin would have 
( remembered, that the large hole through which the 
cat passed might be made use of by the kitten too. 
And the illustrious philosopher discerned the error 
I into which he had fallen, and the fatal objection to the 
i principle on which he had acted, only when taught it 
by the logic of facts. Having provided the holes al- 
i ready mentioned, he waited with pride to see the crea- 
tures pass through them for the first time. And as 
i they arose from the rug before the fire, where they 
' had been lying, and evinced a disposition to roam to 
I other scenes, the great mind stopped in some sublime 
I calculation ; the pen was laid down ; and all but the 
greatest man watched them intently. They approached 
I the door, and discerned the provision made for their 
! comfort. The cat went through the door by the large 
hole provided for her ; and instantly the kitten fol- 
lowed her THROUGH the same hole ! How the 
great man must have felt his error ! There was no 



48 CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 

resisting the objection to the course he had pursued, 
that was brought forward by the act of the kitten. 
And it appears almost certain that if Newton, before 
committing himself by action, had argued the case ; if 
he had stated the arguments in favor of the two holes; 
and if he had heard the housemaid on the other side ; 
the error would have been averted. But then New- 
ton had not the advantage which the Chancellor has ; 
he had not the matter argued before him. He argued 
the matter on either side, for himself ; and he over- 
looked a very obvious and irrefragable consideration. 
You and I, my reader, have many a time done what 
was perfectly analogous to the doing of Sir Isaac 
Newton. We have formed opinions and expressed 
them ; and we have done things, thinking we were 
doing wisely and right ; just because we forgot some- 
thing so plain that you would have said no mortal 
could forget it, — something which showed that the 
opinion was idiotic, and the doing that of a fool. You 
know, more particularly, how men wlio have commit- 
ted great crimes, such as murder, seem by some infat- 
uation to have been able to discern only the one ob- 
vious reason that seemed to make the commission of 
that crime a thing tending to their advantage ; and to 
have been incapable of looking just a handbreadth 
farther on, so as to see the fatal, crushing objection to 
the course they took ; — the absolute ruin and destruc- 
tion that must of necessity follow. And the opinion 
of many men upon any subject may often be likened 



CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 49 

to a table which the art of the upholsterer has fash- 
ioned to stand upon a single leg. They hold the opin- 
ion for just one reason : and that reason an unsound 
one. Give that reason a blow with the fatal, unan- 
, swerable objection ; down comes the opinion ; even 
as down would come the table, whose single leg was 
knocked away. 

I am well aware that the severe critic who has read 
the lines which have been written, may feel disposed 
to accuse the writer of a disposition to wander from 
j his path. A great deal of what has been said, is as 
' when you take a look over the stile at a footpath run- 
i ning away from the beaten highway you are to tra- 
I verse ; and end by getting over the stile, and walking 
I a little way along the footpath ; intending, no doubt, 
I ultimately to return to the beaten highway, and to 
plod steadily along it. All this discussion of general 
i principles ought to have been despatched in a line or 
two, analogous to the glance over the stile. But let 
I the critic take into account the fact, that since the 
' writer last sat down to write an essay, he has written 
I a great many serious pages, which it cost hard work 
i to write, and in which nothing in the nature of an in- 
tellectual frisk could be permitted. And thus it is, 
I that with a great sense of relief, he finds himself 
j writing a page whereon he may mildly disport him- 
self; casting logical and other trammels aside ; and 
enjoying a little mental recreation. And now% going 
back from the path, and getting over the stile, we are 
4 



50 CONCERNtN-G BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 

in the liighway again. We turned out of the high- 
way, you remember, at the point where it was said, 

that EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD HAS A BEGINNING 

AND AN END ; and that, upon reflection, it seemed 
that the general principle might be accepted as true. 
No doubt, in our early days, we have heard sermons 
which we thought would never end ; yet ultimately, 
and after the expiration of long time, they did. And 
even those things within our recollection, which seem 
as exceptions to the great principle, are probably ex- 
ceptions rather in appearance than in reality. I re- 
member, indeed, an aged clergyman whom in my 
youth I occasionally heard preach ; who always began 
the first sentence of his sermon, but who never ended 
it ; at least not till the close of the sermon ; and no 
human being could know when that sentence ended, 
or say at what point (if any point in particular) it 
ceased to be. Still even that first sentence of each 
discourse of that good man, came to a close somehow. 
It stopped, if it was not finished, — because the sermon 
stopped. So you see that even that indefinite sentence 
can hardly be regarded as an exception to the rule 
that all things in this world have a beginning and an 
end. 

And now, my friend, having laid down the broad 
principle with which this dissertation sets out, let me 
proceed to say that it is one of the greatest blessings 
of tliis hfe, as well as one of the saddest things in 
this life, that there are such things as beginnings and 
ends. 



CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 51 

We cannot bear a very long, uniform look-out. 
You may remember Miss Jane Taylor's pleasantly- 
told story concerning a certain clock. The pendulum 
of that clock began to calculate how often it would 
have to swing backwards and forwards in the week 
and the month to come ; then, looking still farther 
into futurity, it calculated, by a pretty hard exercise 
of mental arithmetic, how often it would have to swing 
in a year. And it got so frightened at the awful pros- 
pect, that it determined at once to stop. There w^as 
something crushing in that long look-out. It was kill- 
ing to take in at once that unvaried way ; on, and on, 
and on. The pendulum forgot the blessed fact of 
beginnings and ends ; forgot that to our feeling there 
are beginnings and ends even in the duration, the ex- 
panse, the employment, which in fact is most unvary- 
ing. It is an unspeakable blessing that we can stop, 
and start again, in everything ; and that we can fancy 
we do so even when we do not. The pendulum was 
not afraid of a hundred beats, or of a thousand ; but 
tlie prospect of millions terrified it. Yet millions are 
just an aggregate of many hundreds ; and the pen- 
dulum could without fatigue do the hundred, and then 
set off again upon another hundred, and do that with- 
out fatigue. The journey that crushes us down when 
we contemplate it as one long weary thing can be 
borne when we divide it into stages. And one great 
lesson of practical w^isdom is to train ourselves to 
mentally divide everything into stages ; in short, to 



52 CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 

cling habitually to the invaluable doctrine and fact 
of beofinninojs and ends. 

Tiiere was a poor cabman at Paris who committed 
suicide not long ago. He left behind him a letter 
explaining his reasons for the miserable deed. His 
letter expressed no violent feeling, — spoke of no great 
blow that had befallen him. It said that he ended 
his life because he was " weary of doing the same 
things over and over again every day." The poor 
man's mind was doubtless unhinged. Yet you see 
what he did, and how he nursed his insanity. He 
looked too far ahead. He saw all life as one expanse. 
He forgot that life is broken into many stages, — that 
it is made up of beginnings and endings. He could 
not bring himself, for the time, to see it so. Each 
separate day he might have stood ; but a thousand 
days held in prospect at once beat him. It was as 
the bundle of rods was so impossible to break, though 
each single rod might easily enough be broken. It 
was the fallacy which tells so heavily upon most pub- 
lic speakers : that you stand in great awe of a crowd 
of a thousand or two thousand men, each of whom in- 
dividually would inspire you with no awe at all. 

Now, my readers, I know perfectly well that you 
have all known a feeling of weariness and almost of 
despair arise, when you looked far forward and saw 
the long weary way that seemed to stretch on and on 
before you in life. I believe that it is not so much what 
we are actually enduring at the time that prompts the 



CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 53 

cry, " Now, I can bear this no longer ! " as some sud- 
den, vivid glimpse of all this, lasting on, and on, and 
on. There are few lives in which it is not expedient 
to " take short views ; " few minds that, without wea- 
riness and depression, can take in at one view any 
very great part of their life at once. Sometimes 
there comes on us the poor Frenchman's feeling : 
Here is this same round over, and over, and over ; 
the occupations of each day are a circle, and we are 
just going round and round it, like a horse in a mill. 
To-morrow will be like to-day ; and then to-morrow, 
and the day after that ; and so on, on, on. The feel- 
ing is a morbid one, and a wrong one ; but it is a 
common one. A little of the sea in a tumbler is col- 
orless ; but a vast deal of the sea, seen in its ocean 
bed, is green. With life the case is reversed. In 
the commonplace coui'se of life, the path we are act- 
ually treading may look rather green, — green, I 
mean, hke the cheerful verdure of grass ; but if you 
take in too great a prospect, the whole tract is apt to 
take the aspect of a desert waste, with only a green 
spot here and there. You will not add to the cheer- 
fulness and hopefulness of man or of child, by drill- 
ing into him : " This morning you will do such and 
such things ; and all day such other things ; and in 
the evening such other things ; then you will sleep. 
To-morrow morning you will rise, and then the same 
things over and over ; and so on, on. I have known 
a malignant person who enjoyed the work of present- 



54 CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 

ing to others such disheartening views of life. Let 
me, my reader, counsel the opposite course. Let us 
not look too far on. Let us not look at life as one 
unvaried expanse ; although we may justly do so. 
Let us discipline our minds to look at life as a series 
of beginnings and ends. It is a succession of stages ; 
and we shall think of one stage at a time. " Suffi- 
cient unto the day is the evil thereof." JNIost people 
can bear one day's evil ; the thing that breaks men 
down is the trying to bear on one day the evil of two 
days, twenty days, a hundred days. We can bear a 
day of pain, followed by a night of pain ; and that 
again by a day of pain, and thus onward. But we 
can bear each day and night of pain only by taking 
each by itself. We can break each rod, but not the 
bundle. And the sufferer, in real great suffering, 
turns to the wall in blank despair when he looks too 
far on ; and takes in a uniform dreary expanse of 
suffering, unrelieved by the blessed relief of even fan- 
ciful beginnings and ends. 

I remember a ])Oor woman whom I used often to 
visit and pray with, in my first parish. She died of 
cancer ; and the excruciating disease took eight months 
to run its course, after having reached the point at 
which the pain became almost intolerable. In all that 
long time, the poor woman told me that she was never 
aware that she had slept ; it seemed to her that the 
time never came in which she ceased to be conscious 
of agony. Her sufferings formed an unbroken dura- 



CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 55 

tion, undivided bj beginnings and ends. Slie was a 
good Christian woman, and had a blessed hope in 
another world. But I can never cease to remember 
her despairing face, as she seemed to look onward to 
weeks of agony, always growing worse and worse, till 
it should wear her down to her grave. 

The power and habit of taking comprehensive views 
is not in every case a desirable thing. It is well for 
us that we should look at our work in life in its parts, 
rather than as a whole. Of course you understand 
what I mean. I am far from saying that we ought not 
oftentimes to consider what is the drift and bearing of 
all our life, and of all we are doing in it. I mean that 
to avoid a fatiguing and disheartening result, we should, 
for certain purposes, look not at the entire chain, but 
at each successive link of it. Of course, we know each 
link will be succeeded by the next ; but let us think 
of them one at a time. Let us be thankful for Satur- 
day night, and let us enjoy it ; and let us hold at arm's 
length the intruding thought of Monday morning, 
when the shoulder must be put to the collar again. 
No doubt, in the work of life, every end is also a be- 
ginning. We rest for a little, perhaps only in thought 
and feeling ; and then we go at our work again. But 
it is a convenient thing, and it helps to carry us on in 
our way, to mark out a number of successive ends, and 
thus to divide our journey into successive stages. It 
is well for us that when we start, we cannot see how 
far we have to go. We should give up all effort in 



56 CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 

despair, if from the beginning we held in view all the 
interminable length of way, whose length we shall 
hardly feel when we are wiled away along it gradu- 
ally, step by step. It has always appeared to me ex- 
tremely bad policy in any [)reacher, who desires to keep 
up the interest of his congregation, to announce at the 
beginning of the sermon, that in the first place he will 
do so and so ; and in the second place such another 
thing ; and in the third place something else ; and 
finally close with some practical remarks. I can say 
for myself, that whenever I hear any preacher say 
anything like that, an instant feeling of irksomeness 
and weariness possesses me. You cannot help think- 
ing of the long tiresome way that is to be got over, 
before happily reaching the end. You check off each 
head of the sermon as it closes ; but your relief at 
thinking it is done, is dashed by the thought of what 
a deal more is yet to come. No : the skilful preacher 
will not thus map out his subject, telling his hearers 
so exactly what a long way they have to go. He will 
wile them along, step by step. He will never let 
them have a long out-look. Let each head of dis- 
course be announced as it is arrived at. People can 
bear one at a time, who would break down in the 
simultaneous prospect of three, not to say of seven or 
eight. And then, when the Sermon is nearly done, 
you may, in a sentence, give a connected view of all 
you have said ; and your skill will be shown if people 
think to themselves, what a long way they have been 



CONCERmNG BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 57 

brought without the least sense of weariness. I lately- 
heard a sermon, which was divided into seven heads. 
If the preacher had named them all at the beginning, 
the congregation would have ceased to listen ; or 
would have listened under the oppressive thought of 
what a vast deal awaited them before they would be 
free. But each head was announced just as it was 
arrived at ; the congregation was wiled along insensi- 
bly ; and the sermon was listened to with breathless 
attention from the first sentence to the last. 

Let it be so with life, and the work of life. It would 
crush down any man's resolution, if he saw in one 
glance the whole enormous bulk of labor, which he 
will get through in a lifetime, without feeling it so 
very much at each successive stage. It is well to 
break up our journey into separate portions ; to take 
it bit by bit; to set ourselves a number of successive 
ends ; even though we know that we are practising a 
sort of deception on ourselves ; and that when the end 
we have immediately in view is reached, our work 
will be just as far from being done, as ever. Your 
little boy has before him the mighty task of his educa- 
tion. You do not tell the little thing at once the 
whole extent of toil that is included in that. No ; you 
fix on a small part of the work that is to be done ; 
you show the little man that as his first end. That is 
the first thing to be done ; and then we shall see what 
is to come next. And yet you know, and the little 
child knows just as well, that after he has conquered 



58 CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 

that tremendous alphabet, he must just begin again 
with something else ; that by a hundred steps, — each 
set out at first as an end to be attained ; and each 
indeed an end, but likewise a beginning, — he must 
mount from his first little book onwards and upwards 
into the fields of knowledge and learning. Let us, if 
we are wise men, hold by the grand principle of step 
BY STEP ; let us be thankful that God, knowing that 
weariness is a thing that must be felt at intervals by 
the minds and bodies of all His creatures, has ap- 
pointed that they shall live in a world of Beginnings 
and Ends. Yes, we can stand a day at a time ; but 
if we forget the law of beginnings and ends, we shall 
come to be bearing the weight of a hundred days 
together. And that will crush the strongest. 

Many people, of an anxious temperament, are like 
the pendulum already mentioned. The pendulum 
looked ahead to the incalculable multitude of ticks, 
forgetting that there would always be a moment to 
tick in. And you can easily see that many human 
beings plod heavily and dully through their work in 
life, because instead of giving their mind mainly to 
the present tick, they are thinking of the innumerable 
ticks that are coming. You know quite well that the 
work of life is done by most animals that have to 
work, in a dull, spiritless way. Few go through their 
work in a cheerful, lively way. Even inferior ani- 
mals are coming to imitate their rational fellow-crea- 
tures. The other day, I was driving in a cab along a 



CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 59 

certain broad and ugly highway, which unites Athens 
with the Pirjeus. I overtook and passed various 
drays, drawn by fine hirge horses. I carefully i-e- 
marked the expression of the countenance of each 
successive horse. All of them had a very gloomy 
and melancholy look. They seemed as though they 
were enduring. They coukl stand it ; and that was 
all. And I thought, here is an example of the way 
in which this world mainly goes on. It goes on ; it 
gets through ; but not cheeifully. You could know, 
even if you had no better means of knowing, that 
there is something wrong. And the working bees of 
the human race do, for the most part, go through their 
work like the dull, down-looking horse. The horses 
were plump and sleek ; they were plainly w^ell fed 
and well groomed ; yet their expression was sorrow- 
ful, or at least apathetic. It would have struck 
you less, to have seen that dull look on the foce of 
some 20Oor, half-starved screw. And you know that it 
is generally the human beings whose material advan- 
tages are the greatest, who have the most unsatisfied 
and unhappy expression of countenance. Look at the 
portraits of cabinet ministers and the like. Few work 
with a light heart, and with enjoyment in their work. 
Many forebodings, and many cares, sit heavily upon 
the heart and brain of most. Oh for more practical 
belief in Beofinninjrs and Ends ! 

It is characteristic of those things which possess a 
Beginning and an End, that they also possess a Mid- 



60 CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 

die, of greater or less extent. But we do not mind 
about the middle nearly so much. The middle is 
much less affecting and striking. It is the first start, 
and then the close, that we mainly feel. You know 
the peculiar interest with which we look at the setting 
sun of summer, in his last minutes above the horizon. 
Of course he was going on just as fast through all the 
day ; but at mid-day, we did not know the value of 
each minute, as we do when he is fast going down. I 
have been touched by the sight of human life, ebbing 
almost visibly away ; and you could not but think of 
the sun in his last little space above the mountains, or 
above the sea. I remember two old gentlemen, great 
friends ; both on the extreme verge of life. One was 
above ninety ; the other above eighty. But their wits 
were sound and clear; and, better still, their hearts 
were right. They confessed that they were no more 
than strangers and pilgrims on the earth ; they de- 
clared plainly that they sought a country, far away, 
where most of those they had cared for were waiting 
for them. But the body was very nearly worn out ; 
and though the face of each was pleasant to look at, 
paralysis had laid its grasp upon the aged machinery 
of limb and muscle which had played so long. I used, 
for a few weeks, to go one evening in the week and 
sit with tlunn, and take tea. They always had tea in 
large breakfast cups; other cups would not have done. 
I remember how the two paralytic hands shook about, 
as they tried to drink their tea. There they were, the 



CONCERKING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 61 

two old friends ; they had been friends from boyhood, 
and they had been over the world together. You 
could not have looked, my fi'iend, but with eyes some- 
what wet, at the large tea-cups, shaking about, as the 
old men with difficulty raised them to their lips. And 
there was a thing that particularly struck me. There 
was a large old-fashioned watch, always on a little stand 
on the tea-table, ticking on and on. You seemed to feel 
it measuring out the last minutes, running fast away. It 
always awed me to look at it and hear it. Only for a 
few weeks did I thus visit those old friends, till one 
died ; and the other soon followed him, where there are 
no palsied hands or aged hearts. No doubt, through all 
the years the old-fashioned watch had gone about in 
the old gentleman's pocket, life had been ebbing as 
really and as fast as then. And the sands were run- 
ning as quickly for me as for the aged pilgrims. But 
then with me it was the middle ; and to them it was 
the end. And I always felt it very solemn and touch- 
ing, to look at the two old men on the confines of life, 
and at the watch loudly ticking off their last hours. 
One seemed to feel time ebbing, — as you see the set- 
ting sun go down. 

Beginnings are difficult. It is very hard to begin 
rightly in a new work or office of any kind. And I 
am thinking not merely of the inertia to be overcome 
in taking to work ; though that is a great fact. In 
writing a sermon or an essay, the first page is much 



62 CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 

the hardest. You know, it costs a locomotive engine 
a great effort to start its train ; once the train is off, 
the engine keeps it going at great speed with a tenth, 
or less, of the first heavy pull. But I am thinking 
now of the many foolish things whicli you are sure to 
say and do in your ignorance, and in the novelty of 
the situation. Even a Lord Chancellor has behaved 
very absurdly in his first experience of his great ele- 
vation. It would be a great blessing to many men- to 
be taken elsewhere, and have a fresh start. As a 
general rule, a clergyman should not stay all his life 
in his first parish. His parishioners will never forget 
the foolish things he did at his first coming, in his in- 
experienced youth. There, he cannot get over these ; 
but elsewhere he would have the good of them, with- 
out the ill. He would have the experience, dearly 
bought; while the story of the blunders and troubles 
by which it was bought would be forgotten. I dare 
say there are people, miserable and useless where they 
are, who, if they could only get away to a new place, 
and begin again, would be all right. In that new 
place they would avoid the errors and follies by which 
they have made their present place too hot to hold 
them. Give them a new start ; give them another 
chance ; and taught by their experience of the scrapes 
and uuhai)piness into which they got b}^ tiieir hasty 
words, their ill temper, their suspicion and impatience, 
their domineering spirit, and their determination in 
little things to have their own way ; you would find 



CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 63 

them do excellently. Yes, there is something admi- 
rable about a Beginning ! There is something cheer- 
ing to the poor fellow who has got the page on which 
he is writing hopelessly blotted and befouled, when 
you turn over a new leaf, and give him the fresh un- 
sullied expanse to commence anew ! It is like wiping 
out a debt that never can be paid, and that keeps the 
poor strugghng head under water ; but wipe it out, 
and oh, with what new life will the relieved man go 
through all his duty ! It is a terrible thing to drag a 
lengthening chain ; to know that, do what you may, 
the old blot remains, and cannot be got rid of. I know 
various people, soured, useless, and unhappy, who (I 
am sure) would be set right forever, if they could but 
be taken away from the muddle into which they have 
got themselves, and allowed to begin again somewhere 
else. I wish I were the patron of six livings in the 
Church. I think I could make something good and 
happy of six men who are turned to poor account 
now. But alas, that in man}^ things there is no sec- 
ond chance ! You take the wrong turning ; and you 
are compelled to go on in it, long after you have found 
that it is wrong. You have made your bed, and you 
must lie on it. And it is sad to think how early in 
life all life may be marred. A mere boy or girl may 
get into the dismal lane which has no turning ; and 
out of which they never can get, to start afresh in a 
better track. How many of us, my readers, would 
be infinitely better and happier, if we could but begin 
again ! 



6 J- CONCERNmG BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 

An End is sometimes a very great blessing. I 
have no doubt, my readers, that in your childhood 
you have often feh this when a sermon was brought 
to a close. Perhaps in maturer years you have ex- 
perienced a like emotion of relief under the like cir- 
cumstances. I can say deliberately that never in my 
youth did I once wish that such a discourse should be 
longer than it w^as. Yet we all remember how we 
have shrunk from Ends. You may have read a fairy 
tale by Mr. Thackeray, with illustrations by its au- 
thor. One of these is a cartoon, representing a boy 
eating a bun, apparently of superior quality ; and 
at the same time expressing a sentiment common to 
early youth. He eats ; and as he eats, he speaks as 
follows : " Oh what fun ! Nice plum-bun ! How I 
wish it never was done ! " I remember the mental 
state. I have known it well. In my mind it is 
linked with the thought of plum-pudding, and of 
other luxuries and dainties. It was sad to see the 
object lessen, as it was enjoyed, — to see it melt away, 
like a summer sunset ! And about Christmas-time, 
one had sometimes a like feeling as to the appetite 
and relish for plum-pudding and the like. Would it 
were unceasing ! I mean the appetite. But you re- 
member how it flagged. And though you stimulated 
it with cold water, yet the fourth supply beat you, 
and had to be taken away. And you remember, too, 
how you shrunk from the end of your holiday sea- 
son, and wished that time would stand still. You 



CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 65 

may liave read the awful scene in Christopher Mar- 
lowe's " Faustus," where the hapless philosopher, on the 
verge of his appointed season, seems to cling to each 
moment as it passes away from him. And oh, my 
reader, if the great work of life have not been done 
while the day lasted, think how awful it will be to 
feel that the end of the day of grace is here ! Think 
of poor Queen Elizabeth in her dying hour, offering 
all the wealth of her kin2;dom for another day of life ! 
We cannot, in the commonplace days of ordinary 
health and occupation, riglitly realize the tremendous 
fact ; but think of the End of this life, to the man 
who has no hope beyond it ! To feel that all in the 
world you have toiled for and loved is going from 
you ; to feel your feeble hand losing its grasp of all ; 
to see the faces around grow dim through the mists 
of death ; to feel the weary heart pausing, and the 
last chill creeping upwards ; to feel that you are 
driven irresistibly to the edge of the awful gulf, — 
and no hope beyond ! But remeriiber, reader, it will 
be your own fault, if you come to that. 

It is the end of a career that gives the character 
to it all. We feel as if a life, however honorable 
and happy, were blighted by a sorry ending. The 
thought of Napoleon at St. Helena squabbling about 
the thickness of his camp soup, and the number of 
clean shirts to be allowed him, casts back an impres- 
sion of pettiness upon the man even in his mid-career. 
There is a graver consideration. If a man had lived 
5 



QG CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 

many years in usefulness and honor, but finally fell 
into grievous sin and shame, we should think of his 
life as on the whole a shameful one. But if a man 
end his career nobly, if his last years are honorable 
and hajjpy, we should think of his life on the whole 
as one of happiness and honor, though its beginning 
were ever so lowly and sad. You remember how a 
great king of ancient days asked a philosopher to 
name some of the happiest of the race. The phi- 
losopher named several men, all of whom were dead. 
The king asked him why he did not think of men 
still living ; '" Look at all my splendor," he said to the 
philosopher ; " why do you not think of me ? " " Ah," 
said the wise man ; " who knows what your life and 
your lot may.be yet ? I call no man happy before 
he dies ! " [Distinguished classical scholar, I am not 
telling the story for you.] And, sure enough, that 
monarch was reduced to captivity and misery ; and 
died a miserable captive : and so you would not say 
that his life was a happy or a prosperous one on the 
whole. But in the most important of all our con- 
cerns, my friend, the End is far more important than 
that. Yoii know that though the monarch, vanquished 
and uncrowned, died in a dungeon, that could not blot 
out the years of royalty he had actually lived. He 
had been a king, once ; however fallen now. The 
man who sits by his lonely fireside, silent and de- 
serted, can yet remember the days when that quiet 
dwelling was noisy and gladsome with young voices : 



CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 67 

they were real days, when his children were round 
him ; and it does him good yet to look back on them, 
— though now the little things are in their graves. 
But the fearful thing about the Christian who ends in 
sin and shame, is this : He dare not comfort himself 
under the present wretchedness, by looking back to 
better days, when he thought he was safe. The fear- 
ful thing is that this present end of sin has power to 
blot out those better days : if a man, however fair his 
profession, end at last manifestly not a Christian, this 
proves that he never was a Christian at all ! You see 
what tremendous issues depend upon the Christian 
life ending well ! It is little to say that ending ill is 
a sad thing at the time : it is that ending ill flings 
back a baleful light on all the days that went before ! 
If the end be bad, then there was something amiss all 
along, however little suspected it may have been. It 
is only when the end is well over, that you can be 
perfectly sure you are safe. You remember Mr. 
Moultrie's beautiful poem, about his living children 
and his dead child. The living children were good, 
Avere all he could wish ; but God only knew how 
temptation might prevail against them as years went 
on ; but as for the dead one, he was safe. " It may 
be that the Tempter's wiles theiy' souls from bliss may 
sever ; But if our own poor faith fail not, lie must be 
ours forever ! " Yes, that little one had passed the 
End ; no evil nor peril could touch Am more. 



68 CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 

I dare say you have sometimes found that for a lay 
or two, a line of poetry or some short sentence of 
prose would keep constantly recurring to your mem- 
oiy. I find it so ; and the line is sometimes Shak- 
speare's ; sometimes Tennyson's ; often it is from a 
.certain Volume (the Best Volume) of which it is my 
duty to think a great deal. And I remember how, 
not long since, for about a week, the line that was 
always recuri-ing was one by Solomon, king and phi- 
losopher (and something more) : it was " Better is the 
end of a thing than the beginning." And at first I 
thought that the words sounded sad, and more hea- 
then-like than Christian. Has it come to this, that 
God's Word tells us concerning the life God gave us, 
that the best thing that can happen to us is soonest to 
get rid of that sad gift ; and that each thing that 
comes our way, is something concerning which \ve 
may be glad when it is over? I thought of Mr. 
Kingsley, and wondered if the sum of the matter, 
after all, is " The sooner it's over, the sooner to 
sleep;" and of Sophocles, and how he said " Not to 
be, is best of all ; but when one hath come to this 
world, then to return with quickest step to whence he 
came, is next." But then I saw, gradually, that the 
words are neither cynical nor hopeless ; that they do 
but remind us of the great truth, that God would have 
our life here one of constant progress from good to 
better, and so the End best of all. We are to be 
" forgetting those things which are behind, and reach- 



CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 69 

ing forth unto those which are before," because the 
best things are still before us. If things in this world 
go as God intended they should, then everything is a 
step to something else, something farther : which 
ought to be an advance on what went before it; Avhich 
ought to be better than what went before it. And 
above all, the End of our life here (if it end well), so 
safe and so happy, is far better than its Beginning, 
with all the perils of the voyage yet to come. 

I thought of these things the other Sunday after- 
noon, seeing the Beginning and the End almost side 
by side. At that service I did not preach ; and I was 
sitting in a square seat in a certain church, listening 
to a very good sermon preached by a friend. A cer- 
tain little boy, just four years old, came and sat beside 
me, leaning his head on me as a pillow ; and soon 
after the beginning of the sermon, the little man (very 
properly) fell sound asleep. And (attending to the 
sermon all the while) I could not but look down at 
the fat rosy little face, and the abundance of curly 
hair ; the fresh, clear complexion, the cheerful, inno- 
cent expression ; and think how fair and pleasing a 
thing is early youth, — how beautiful and hopeful is 
our life's Beginning. And after service was over, on 
my way home, I went to see a revered friend, who, at 
the end of a long Christian life, was dying. There 
was the worn, ghastly face, with its sharp features ; 
the weary, worn-out frame ; the weakened, wandering 
mind, so changed from what it used to be. And 



70 CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 

standing by that good Christian's bed, and thinking of 
the httle child, I said to myself, There is the Begin- 
ning of life ; Here is the End ; — what shall we say in 
the view of that sad contrast ? And I thought, there 
and then, that " Better is the end of a thing than the 
beginning ! " Yes ; better is the end of a dangerous 
voyage than its outset. You have seen a ship sailing 
away upon a long, perilous voyage over the ocean ; 
the day was fair and sunshiny, and the ship looked 
gay and trim, with her white sails and her freshly- 
painted sides. And you have seen a ship coming safe 
into port at the end of her thousands of miles over the 
deep, under a gloomy, stormy sky, and with hull and 
masts battered by winds and waves. And you have 
thought, I dare say, that better far was this ending, 
safe and sure, than even that sunshiny beginning, with 
all the risks before it. And here, in the w^orn figure 
on the Aveary bed, here is the safe end of the voyage 
of life ! Oh, what perils are yet before the merry lit- 
tle child ! Who can say if that little one is to end in 
glory ? But to the dying Christian all these perils 
are over. He is safe, safe ! And then, remember, this 
is not yet the end, you see. It is NOT the end, that 
weary figure, lying on that bed of pain. It is only 
the last step before the end. A very little, and how 
glorious and happy that sufferer will be ! You would 
not wish to keep him here, when you think of all the 
blessedness into which the next step from this pain 
will bear him. Nay ; but you may take up, in a sub- 



CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. 71 

limer significance than that of deliverance from mere 
earthly ill, the beautiful words of the greatest poet : 

" Vex not his soul : oh, let him pass ! He hates him, 
That would, upon the rack of this rough world, 
Stretch him out longer! " 



CHAPTER TV, 
GOING ON. 




-n^ 



IHERE are many things of which you 
have a much more vivid perception at 
some times than at others. The thing is 
before you ; but sometimes you can grasp 
it firmly, sometimes it eludes you mistily. You are 
walking along a country path, just within hearing of 
distant bells. You hear them faintly ; but all of a 
sudden, by some caprice of the wind, the sound is 
borne to you with startling clearness. There is some- 
thing analogous to that in our perceptions and feelings 
of many great facts and truths. Commonly, we per- 
ceive them and feel them faintly ; but sometimes they 
are borne in upon us, we cannot say how. Some- 
times we get vivid glimpses of things which we had 
often talked of, but which we had never truly dis- 
cerned and realized before. And for many days it 
has been so with me. I have seemed to feel the lapse 
of time with startling clearness. I have no doubt, my 
reader, that you have sometimes done the like. You 
have seemed to actually perceive the great current 



GOING ON. 73 

with which we are all gliding steadily away and 
away. 

Rapid movement is a thing which has a certain 
power to disguise itself from the person who is in- 
volved in it. Every one knows that if you are trav- 
elling in an express train at sixty miles an hour, you 
do not feel the speed nearly so much as the man does 
who stands beside the track and sees the great mass 
sweep by like a hurricane. Have you ever thought it 
would be curious, if we could for a few minutes be 
made sensible of the world's motion ? Here we are, 
tearing on through space at an inconceivable speed. 
We do not feel it, of course ; we could not stand it. 
I should like to feel it for half a minute — not for more. 

But it is not that motion we are to think of at pres- 
ent. No special illumination has been accorded to 
me, making me feel that fact which we all know with- 
out feeling. But there is another rapid motion, com- 
mon to all of us, as is the motion of the earth which 
bears us all. There is a great current bearing us 
along and all things about us, which is commonly not 
much felt. But it seems to me that for several weeks 
I have been actually feeling it. I have been exces- 
sively busy ; living in a great pressure and hurry of 
occupations. In that state, my reader, you feel Sun- 
day after Sunday return with a rapidity which takes 
away your breath ; and let me say that if you have to 
provide one sermon, and still more if you have to pro- 
vide two, against the return of each, you will in that 



74 GOING ON. 

fever of work and haste come to look from one Sun- 
day to the next till yon will come to find them flying 
past you like the qnarter-mile posts on a railway. 
You will find that you can hardly believe, walking 
into church on Sunday morning, that a week has gone 
since the last Suitday. And in such a time you will 
realize much more distinctly than you usually do, that 
all things are going on, — drifting away, — all in com- 
pany. These April days are taking life away from 
you, from me, — from prince and peasant. There is 
one thing at least wdiich all human beings are using 
up at exactly the same rate. We can all get out of 
the day just twenty-four hours, neither more nor less. 
One man may live at the rate of a hundred pounds a 
year, and another at the rate of a hundred thousand ; 
but each expends his time at the rate of three hun- 
dred and sixty-five days a year. Whatever other 
diflferences there may be between the lots of human 
beings, we are all drifting on with the current of time, 
and drifting at the same rate exactly. And we are 
certainly drifting. We are never quite the same in 
two successive weeks. One Sunday is not like the 
last. ' Look closely, and you will see that there is a 
difference, — slight perhaps, but real. Each time you 
sit down to your " Saturday Review" you feel there is 
a difference since the last time. Still more do you feel 
it, as you read the returning " Fraser," coming at the 
longer interval of a month. Things never come back 
again quite the same. And indeed in Nature there is 



GOING ON. 75 

a singular dislike to uniformity. If to-day be a fine 
day, look back; it is almost certain that this day 
last year was rainy. If to-day you are in very cheer- 
ful spirits, it is probable that on the corresponding day 
in the year that is gone you were very dull and 
anxious. No doubt human beings sometimes success- 
fully resist Nature's love of variety. Some men have 
an especial love for having and doing things always in 
the same way. They walk on special days always on 
the same side of the street; perhaps they put their 
feet like Dr. Johnson, on the same stones in the pave- 
ment. They dress in the same M^ay year after year. 
They maintain anniversaries, and try to bring the old 
party around the table once more, and to have the old 
time back. But we cannot have things exactly over 
again. There is a difference in the feeling, even if 
you are able precisely to reproduce the fact. And 
indeed the wonder is that things are so much like, as 
they are to-day, to what they were a year ago, when 
we think of the innumerable possibilities of change 
that hang over us. Yes, we are drifting on and on, 
down to the great sea. Sit down, my friend, to 
write your article. You have written many. The 
paper is the same ; the table on which you Avrite is 
the same ; the inkstand is the same ; and the pen is 
made by the same mender that made all the rest. 
And it is possible enough that when the article is 
printed at last, your readers will say that it is just the 
same thing over again ; but it is not. To your feeling 



76 GOING ON. 

this day's work is quite different from the work of all 
preceding days. There is an undefinable variation 
from whatever was before. And as weeks and 
months go on, there come to be differences which some 
may think more real than any in the comparatively 
fanciful respect of feeling. The hair is turning thin 
and gray ; the old spirit is subdued. There are 
changes in taste, in judgment, in feeling, in many 
ways. Yes, we are all Going On. 

I wish to stop. There is something awful in this 
perpetual progression. If the current would slacken 
its speed, at least, and let one quietly think for a little 
while ! Let us sit down, my friend, by the way-side. 
We are old enough now to look back, as well as to 
look round ; and to think how life is going with us, 
and with those we know. We are now in the middle 
passage ; perhaps farther on. And if we are half way 
in fact, assuredly we are far more in feeling. Though 
a man live to seventy, his first thirty-five years are by 
far the longer portion of his life. 

Let us think to-day, my reader, of ourselves and of 
our friends ; and of how it is faring with us as we go on. 

It is a curious thing now, when we have settled to 
our stride, and are going on (in most cases) very 
much as we probably shall go on as long as we live, to 
compare what we are with what we promised at our 
entrance on life to be. You remember people who 
began with a tremendous flourish of trumpets, — people 
of whom there was a vague impression, more or less 



GOING ON. 77 

general, tliat they were to do great things. Some- 
times this impression was confined to the man himself. 
Not unfrequently it w^as shared by his mother and his 
sisters. It occasionally extended to his fatlier and his 
brothers. And in a few cases, generally in these 
cases not without some reason, it prevailed in the 
mind of his fellow-students. And it may be said, that 
a belief that some young lad is destined to do con- 
siderable things, if it be anything like universal among 
his college companions, must have some foundation. 
A belief to the same effect with regard to any young 
man, if confined to two or three of his intimate com- 
panions, is generally quite groundless ; and if it exist 
only in the heart of his mother and of himself, it is 
quite sure to be absurd and idiotic. We can all, prob- 
ably, remember individuals who, without any reason 
apparent to onlookers, cherished a most extraordinary 
high opinion of themselves ; and one which was not at 
all taken down by frequently being beaten, and even 
distanced, in the competitions of College life. Such 
individuals, for the most part, indulged a very bitter 
and malicious spirit towards students more able and 
successful than themselves. I wish I could believe 
that modesty always goes with merit. I fear no rule 
can be laid down. I have beheld inordinate self- 
conceit in very clever fellows, as well as in very 
stupid ones. And I have beheld self-conceit devel- 
oped in a degree which could hardly be exceeded, in 
individuals who were neither very clever nor very 



78 GOING ON. 

stupid, but remarkably ordinary in every way. Let 
me here remark, that I have known the most enthusi- 
astic admiration excited in the breasts of one or two 
individuals by a very commonplace man. I mean 
admiration of his talents. And I beheld the spectacle 
with great wonder, not unmixed with indignation. I 
can quite understand man or woman feeling enthusi- 
astic admiration for a great and wonderful genius. I 
can feel that warm admiration myself. And I can 
imagine its existing in youthful minds, even when 
the genius is dashed with great failings, or is of a very 
irregular nature. But the thing I wonder at, and 
cannot understand, is enthusiastic admiration professed 
and felt for dreary commonplace. I am not in the 
least surprised when I hear a young person, or indeed 
an old one, speaking in hyperbolical terms of the 
preaching of Bishop Wilberforce. I have heard it 
myself, and I know how brilliant and effective it is. 
But I really look with wonder at the young woman 
who professes equally enthusiastic admiration of the 
sermons of Dr. Log. I have heard Dr. Log preach. 
I could not for my life attend to his sermon. It was 
horribly tiresome. There was not in it a trace of pith 
or beauty. It approached to the nature of twaddle. 
I was awe-stricken when I heard it described in rap- 
turous phrases. I recognized a superior intelligence. 
I thought to myself, reversing Mr. Tickell's lines, 
" You hear a voice I cannot hear ; you see a hand I 
cannot see." It is riijht to add, that the enthusiastic 



GOING ON. 79 

appreciators of Dr. Log were very few in number, 
and that they appeared to me nearly as stupid as Dr. 
Log himself 

But leaving Dr. Log and his admirers, let me say 
that very clever fellows, very stupid fellows, and very 
commonplace fellows, have started in life with a great 
flourish of trumpets. The vanity of many lads, leav- 
ing the Univer^ity, is enormous. They expect to set 
the Thames on fire, to turn the world upside down. 
A few takings-down bring the best of them to modesty 
and sense. And the men for whom the flourish was 
loudest do sometimes, when all find their level, have 
to rest at a very low one. Many painful mortifications 
and struggles bring them to it. Oh ! if talent and 
ambition could always be in a man, in just proportion ! 
But I have known the most commonplace of men, 
with ambition that would have given enough to do to 
the abilities of Shakspeare. And we may perhaps 
say, that no one who begins with a great flourish ever 
fails to disappoint himself and his friends. He may 
do very well ; he may do magnificently ; but he does 
not come up to the great expectations formed of him. 
I was startled the other day to hear a certain man 
named as a failure, who has attained supreme emi- 
nence in his own walk in life, and that a conspicuous 
one. I said No ; he is anything but a failure ; he has 
attained extraordinary eminence ; he is a great man. 
But the reply was, " Ah, we expected far more ! We 
thought he would leave an impression on the age, and 



80 GOING ON. 

he has certainly not done that ; while it seems certain 
he has done the best he is ever to do." But look 
round, my friend, and think how the world goes with 
those who set out with you. They are generally, I 
suppose, jogging on humbly and respectably. The 
present writer did not in his youth live among those 
from whom the famous of the earth are likely to be 
taken. One or two of the number have risen to no 
small eminence ; but the lot of most has circumscribed 
their ambition. It is not in the Senate that he can 
look to find many of the names of his old companions. 
It is not likely that any will be buried in Westmin- 
ster Abbey. The life of two or three may perhaps be 
written, if they leave behind them a warm friend who 
is not very busy. It does not matter. The nonsense 
has been taken out of us by the work of life. And 
on the whole, we are going creditably on. 

It is worthy of notice, that things which at the be- 
ginning were very bad may be made good by a very 
small change wrought upon them. You see this in 
human beings, as they go on through life. You re- 
member, I have no doubt, how various passages in 
the earlier writings of Mr. Tennyson, on which the 
" Quarterly Review " savagely fixed at their first pub- 
lication, and which Mr. Tennyson's warmest admirers 
must admit to have been in truth very weak, affected, 
and ridiculous, have by alterations of wonderfully 
small amount been brought to a state in which the 
most fiistidious critic could find no fault in them. 



GOING ON. fel 

Just a touch from the master-hand did it all. You 
have in a homelier degree felt the same yourself, in 
correcting and re-writing your own crude and imma- 
ture compositions. Often a very small matter takes 
away the mark of that Beast whose name shall not be 
mentioned here. I know^ a very distinguished preach- 
er, really a pulpit orator, whose manner at his outset 
was remarkably awkward. No doubt he has devoted 
much pains to his manner since ; though his art is 
high enough to conceal any trace of art. I heard hira 
preach not long since ; and his manner was singularly 
graceful ; while yet there w^as no great change ma- 
terially. You have remarked how the features of a 
girl's face, very plain at fourteen, have at twenty 
grown remarkably pretty. And yet the years have 
wrought no very great change. The face is unques- 
tionably and quite recognizably the same ; yet it has 
passed from plainness into beauty. And so, as w^e go 
on in life, you will find a man has got rid of some 
little intrusive folly which just makes the difference 
between his being very good and his being veiy bad. 
The man whose tendency to boast, or to exaggerate, 
or to talk thoughtlessly of others, made him appear a 
fool in his youth, has corrected that one evil tendency, 
and lo ! he is quite altered — he is all right ; he is a 
wise and good man. You would not have believed 
what a change for the better would be made by that 
little thing. You know, I dare say, how poor and bad 
are the first crude thoughts for your sermon or your 



82 GOING ON. 

article, thrown at random on the page. Yet when 
you have arranged and rounded them into a symmet- 
rical, and accurate, and well-considered composition, 
it is wonderful how little change there is from the first 
rude sketch. Looli at the waste scraps of paper be- 
fore you throw them into the fire, and you will find 
some of your most careful and best sentences there, 
word for word. You have not been able to improve 
upon the way in which you first dashed them down. 

There is a sad thing which we are all made to feel, 
as we are going on. It is, that we are growing out of 
things which we are sorry to outgrow. The firmest 
conviction that we are going on to what is better, 
cannot suppress some feeling of regret at the thought 
of what we are leaving behind. When I was a coun- 
try parson, I used to feel very sorry to see a laurel 
or a yew growing out of the shape in which I remem- 
bered it ; and which was associated with plea-sant days. 
There was a dull pang at the sight. I remember well 
a little yew I planted with my own hand. It looks 
like yesterday since I held its top, while a certain man 
filled in the earth, and put the sod round its stem. 
For some time it appeared doubtful if that yew would 
live and grow ; at last it was fairly established, and it 
began to grow vigorously the second year. For a 
year or two more, it was a neat, shaggy little thing ; 
but then it began to put out tremendous shoots, and to 
grow out of my acquaintance. I felt I was losing an 



GOING ON. 83 

old friend. Many a time I had stood and looked at 
the little yew ; I knew every branch of it ; and always 
went to look at it when I had been a few days away. 
No doubt it was growing better ; it was progressing 
with a yew's progress ; I was getting a new friend 
better than the old one ; yet I sighed for the old one 
that was gradually leaving me. You do not like to 
think that your little child must grow into something 
quite different from what it is now, must die into the 
grown up man or woman, must grow hardened to the 
world, and cease to be lovable as now. You would 
like to keep the little thing as it is, when it climbs 
on your knee, and lays a little soft cheek against your 
own. Even in the big girl of seven, that goes to 
school, you regret the wee child of three that you used 
to run after on the little green before your door ; and 
in the dawn of cleverness and thought, though pleas- 
ant to see, still you feel there is something gone which 
you would have liked to keep. But it is an inevitable 
law, that you cannot have two inconsistent good things 
together. You cannot at once have your field green 
as it is in spring, and golden as it is in autumn. You 
cannot at once live in the little dwelling which was 
long your home, and which is surrounded by the mem- 
ories of many years ; and in the more beautiful and 
commodious mansion which your increasing wealth has 
been able to buy. You cannot at once be the mer- 
chant prince, wealthy, influential, esteemed by all, 
though gouty, ageing, and careworn ; and the hopeful, 



84 GOING ON. 

light-hearted lad that came in from the country to 
push his way, and on who.^e early aspirations and 
struggles you look back with a confused feeling as 
though he were another being. You cannot at the 
same time be a country parson, leisurely and quiet, 
living among green fields and trees, and knowing the 
concerns of every soul in your parish ; and have the 
])rivilege and the stimulus of preaching to a congrega- 
tion of educated folk in town. Yet you would look 
round in silence and regret, when you look for the last 
time upon the scenes amid which you passed some 
considerable part of your hfe ; even though you felt 
that the new place of your labors and your lot were 
ever so much better. And though you know it is 
well that your children should grow up into men aild 
women, still you will sometimes be sorry that their 
happy childhood must pass so swiftly and so com- 
pletely away ; that it must be so entirely lost in that 
which is to come after it ; that even in the healthy 
maturity of body and of mind there is so little that 
recalls to you the merry little boy or girl you used to 
know. Yes ; we may have got on to something that 
is unquestionably better ; but still we miss the dear 
old time and way. It is as with the emigrant, who 
has risen to wealth and position in the new world 
across the sea ; but who often thinks, with fond regret, 
of the hills of his native land ; and who, through all 
these years, has never forgotten the cottage where he 
drew his first l)reath, and the little church-vard where 



GOING ON. 85 

his father and mother are sleeping. Yes ; you little 
man with the very curly hair, standing at that sofa 
turning over the leaves of a large Bible with- pictures; 
stay as you are, as long as you can ! For I may live 
to see you grow into something far less pleasant to 
s(^e ; but I shall never live to see you Lord Chancel- 
lor ; though that distinguished post (it is w^ell known) 
is the natural designation of a Scotch clergyman's 
son. 

There is something rather awful implied in going 
on. Its possibilities are vast; you may yet have 
greatly to modify your opinion of any man who is still 
going on. The page is not finished yet ; and it may 
be terribly blotted before it is done with. But the 
man who is no longer going on ; the man who has 
finished his page and handed it in ; is fixed and 
statuesque. There he is, forever. You may finally 
make up your mind about him. He can never do 
anything to disappoint you now. But very many men 
do live on, just to disappoint. They have done their 
best already ; and they are going on producing w^ork 
very inferior to what they once did, and to what we 
might expect of them. You go and hear a great 
preacher ; not upon a special occasion, but in his own 
church, upon a common Sunday. You have read his 
published sermons, and thought them very fine ; some 
sentences from them still linger on your ear. Unhap- 
pily, he did not stop with these fine things. He is 



86 GOING ON. 

<i;oing on still ; and what he is turning off now is quite 
different. There is little to remind you of what he 
was. Your lofty idea of that great and good man 
is sadly shattered. No doubt this is not always so. 
There are men who go on through life ; and go on 
without deterioration. There are men who are always 
themselves ; always up to the mark. But for the 
most part, going on implies a great falling off. Think 
of Sir Walter Scott's last novels. Think of Byron's 
last poetry. Compare " The Virgin Widow " \vith 
" Philip Van Artevelde " Think of the latter pro- 
ductions of the author of " Festus. " Think of the 
last squeezings from the mind of Dr. Chalmers. Think 
of the recent appearances, intellectual and moral, of 
Mr. Walter Savage Landor. Think how roaring Irish 
patriots have become the pensioners of the Saxon, 
after having publicly sworn never to touch the alien 
coin. Think how men who bearded the tyrant in 
their youth, have ended in contented toadyism. We 
are never perfectly safe in forming a judgment of any 
man who is still going on ; that is, of any living man. 
We shall not call him good, any more than happy, till 
we have seen the last of him. His very ending may 
be enough to blight all his past life. You cannot as 
yet settle the mark of a man who is still painting pic- 
tures, still publishing poems, still writing books, still 
si)eaking in parliament, still taking a prominent part 
in public business. He may possibly rise far above 
anything he has yet done. He may possibly sink so 



GOING ON. 87 

far below it, as to lower the general average of his 
entire life. As regards fume, the right thing is an 
end like Nelson's. He ended at his best ; and ended 
definitively. Even Trafalgar would have been over- 
clouded if the hero had still kept going on. Think 
of him perhaps coming back ; being made a Duke ; 
evincing great vanity ; trying to become a leader 
among the Peers, and showing his lack of business 
aptitude and of sound judgment in politics; coming to 
be occasionally hissed about the streets of London ; 
getting involved in discreditable tricks to gain office. 
Now Nelson might have done none of these thini>;s. 
But I believe any one who reads his life will feel that 
he might have done them all. And was it not far 
better that the weak, but great man, the true hero, the 
warm-hearted, lovable, brave, honest admiral, should 
be taken away from the petty and sordid possibilities 
of Going On ; that it should be made sure he 
should never vex or disappoint us ; that he should die 
in a blaze of glory, and leave a name for every Briton 
to cherish and to love ? There are living men, con- 
cerning whom we might regret that they are still 
going on. They cannot rise above their present 
estimation ; they may well sink below it. It would 
be a great thing if some means could be devised, by 
which a man might stop, without dying. A man 
might say, alter having done some difficult and honor- 
able work, reaching over a large portion of his hfe, 
" Now, I stop here. I take my stand on what I have 



88 GOING ON. 

(lone ; judge of me by that. I must still go on 
breathing the air as before ; but I fear I shall let 
myself down ; so don't inquire about me any further." 
We all know that great and good men have some- 
times, in the latter chapters of their life, done things 
on which we can but shut our eyes, and which we 
can but strive to forget. It seems quite certain that 
Solomon, albeit the wisest of men, became a weak old 
fool in his latter days ; nor does the only reliable 
history say anything of final repentance and amend- 
ment. And silly or evil doings early in life, may be 
effaced from remembrance by wise and good doings 
afterwards ; while silly and evil doings in the last 
stage of life, appear to stamp the character of it all. 

It is this thought whicii sometimes makes the recol- 
lection that we are still going on, weigh heavily on 
one. There is no saying how the page of our life 
may be blotted before it is finished ; and you must 
let me say, my friend, that the wise man will stand 
in great fear and suspicion of himself; and will very 
earnestly apply for that sacred influence which alone 
can hold him right to the end, where alone it is to be 
found. There are many things to make one thought- 
ful, as we remember how we are going on ; but the 
great thing (as regards one's self) is, after all, the sight 
of the gloom before us, into which we are advancing 
day by day ; not seeing even a step ahead. And to 
that may be added the occasional examples which are 
pressed upon us in the case of others, who once 



GOING ON. 89 

seemed very much like ourselves, of what human 
beings may come to be. And that which man has 
done, man may do. I see various things that are 
worthy of note, as I look round on the procession of 
the human beings I know and remember, and think 
what comes as we go on. I see some who are rather 
battered and travel-stained. The greatness of the 
way is beginning to tell. I see some who look some- 
what worn and jaded. There are little physical 
symptoms of the wear of the machine. The hair of 
certain men is going, or even gone. The teeth of 
some are not complete, as of yore. On the whole, I 
trust, we are gaining. I do not think there is any 
period of life that one would wish to live over again ; 
no period, at least, of more than a very few days. 
There are wrecks, no doubt ; some who broke down 
early, and have quite disappeared, one does not know 
where ; and among these, more than one or two whose 
promise was of the best. 

Thinking of this one day, I was walking along a 
certain street, and came to a place where it was need- 
ful to cross. A carriage stopped the vvay, if that in- 
deed can be called a carriage which was no more than 
a cab. And my attention was attracted by the cab- 
horse, which was standing close by the pavement. 
He was a sorry creature ; but, as you looked at him, 
there was no mistaking the thoroughbred. There was 
the light head, once so graceful ; the dilated, sensitive 
nostrils were still there, and the slender legs. But 



90 GOING ON. 

the poor legs were bent and shaky ; the neck was cut 
into by the coUar ; the hair was rubbed off the skin 
in many places ; and the sides were going with that 
peculiar motion which indicates broken wind. Here 
was what the poor horse had come to. At first doubt- 
less he was a graceful, cheerful creature, petted and 
made much of in his }outh. Probably he proved not 
worth traniing for a race-horse ; and a thoroughbred 
without sufficient bone and muscle is very useless for 
practical purposes ; tliough it may be remarked that 
a thorouglibred with sufficient bone and muscle is the 
best horse for every kind of work except drawing 
coals or beer. So the poor thing became a riding- 
hack, and having fallen a few times, was sold for a 
cab-horse. And it was plain that for many days he 
had been poorly fed, and hardly worked; and that now 
the cab-proprietor was taking all he could out of him, 
before giving him over to the knacker, to be made into 
sausages. It is a popular delusion that the last stage 
in a horse's existence is to go to the dogs. There are 
some districts in which he goes to the pigs ; and others 
in which he ends by affiDrding nutriment, in a dis- 
guised form, to human beings. I am no alarmist, 
and I believe horse-flesh is quite salutary. All I have 
to add is, that persons having an anti[)athy to that 
article of food, had better inquire where their bacon 
was fed, and had better keep a sharp eye upon their 
sausages. 

This, however, is a digression from a sad reflection. 



GOING ON. 91 

That poor cab-horse suggested various human beings 
whom I once knew. We have all known clever and 
promising youths who became drunken wrecks, and 
wlio deviated into various paths of sin, shame, and 
ruin. I laid down my pen when I had written that 
sentence, and thought of four, five, six, who iiad ended 
so, thinking of them not without a tear. Some were 
the very last you would have expected to come to this. 
There are indeed men whose career as youths is quite 
of a piece with their after-career of shame ; but my 
early friends were not such as these. I can think of 
some, cheerftd, amiable, facile in the hand of com- 
panions good or bad, who bade fair for goodness and 
happiness, yet who went astray, and who were wrecked 
very soon. I knew of one, once a man of high char- 
acter and good standing, who had to become as one 
dead, and who was long afterwards traced, a sailor in 
distant seas. He had a beautiful voice ; and I have 
heard that it was fine to hear him sino-ins; on the deck 
by moonlight as he kept his watch. Poor wretch, 
with what a heavy heart ! 

The change that passes upon one's self, as we go on 
through life, comes so gradually through the wear of 
successive days, that we are haixUy conscious how per- 
ceptibly we are getting through all that we have to 
get through here. We fancy, quite honestly, that we 
do not look any older in the last ten years, and that 
we are now just the same as we were ten years since. 



92 GOING ON. 

AVe fancy tliat, intellectually and morally, we are bet- 
ter ; and physically, just the same. People whose 
character and history are commonplace at least fancy 
this in their more cheerful hours. But sometimes it 
comes home to us what a change has passed on us, 
perhaps in not a very long time. You will feel this 
especially in reading old letters and diaries ; the letters 
you wrote and the diary you kept long ago. You 
probably thought that your present handwriting is ex- 
actly the same as your handwriting of ten years since ; 
but when you put the two side by side, you will see 
how different they are. And in the perusal of these 
ancient documents, it will be borne in upon you how 
completely changed are the things you caj-e for. The 
cares and interests, the fears and hopes, of the old 
days, are mainly gone. You have arrived at quite 
different estimates of people and of things; and if you 
be a wiser, you are doubtless a sadder man. And 
when you go back to the school-boy spot, or to the 
house where you lived when you were ten years old, 
it will be a curious thing to contrast the little fellow 
of that time, with your own grave and sobered self. 
And you will do so the more vividly in the presence 
of some well-remembered object, which has hardly 
changed at all in the years wliich have changed you 
so much. It is a common[)lace ; but commend me to 
commonplaces for reaching the common heart ; the 
[ticlure of the aged man, or even the man in middle 
age, standing beside the tree or the river by which he 



GOING ON. 93 

played when he was a little child. The hills, the 
fields, the trees around, are the same; and there is he, 
so changed ! You remember Wordsworth's beautiful 
ballad, in which the old schoolmaster is lying beside 
the fountain, by wliich he was used to lie in his days 
of youthful strength ; you remember the same old 
man, looking back, from a bright April morning, to 
another April morning exactly like it, but past for 
forty years. We may well believe, that there is not 
a human beino; but knows the feelinsr. It is some 
little thing in our own history that we remember ; but 
it has touched the electric chain of association, and 
wakened up the past. There is a rude song current 
among the coal-miners of the north of England, in 
which an old man is standing by an old oak-tree, and 
speaking to that unchanged friend of the change that 
has passed upon himself; and though the chorus, re- 
curring at the end of each verse, is not so graceful as 
the lines which Wordsworth gives to Matthew, the 
thought is exactly the same. The words are, " Sair 
failed, hinny, sair failed now ; sair failed, hinny, sin I 
kenned thou."' But of all the poems which contrast 
the much-changed man and the little-changed tree, I 
know of none more touching than one I lately read 
in an American magazine. It is called "The Name 
in the Bark." Here is a part of the poem : — 

The self of so long ago, 
And the self I struggle to know, 
I sometimes think we are two, — or are we shadows of one? 



94 GOING ON. 

To-day the shadow I am, 
Comes back in the sweet summer calm, 
To trace -where the earlier shadow flitted awhile in the sun. 

Once more in the dewy morn, 

I trod through the whispering corn: 
Cool to my fevered cheek soft breezy kisses were blown : 

The ribboned and tasselled grass 

Leaned over the flattering glass; 
And the sunny waters trilled the same low musical tone. 

To the gray old birch I came. 

Where I whittled mj^ schoolboy name: 
The nimble squirrel once more ran skippingly over the rail: 

The blackbirds down among 

The alders noisily sung, 
And under the blackberry-trees whistled the serious quail. 

I came, remembering well. 

How mA' little shadow fell, 
As I painfully reached and wrote to leave to the future a sign : 

There, stooping a little, I found 

A half-healed, curious wound; — 
An ancient scar in the bark, but no initial of mine ! 



I shall not add the verses in which the poet wisely 
moralizes on this instance how fast the traces we 
leave behind us pass away. Is it because I can re- 
member how my little shadow fell, many years since, 
that the last-quoted verse touches me as it does ? We 
cast a different shadow now, my friend, from that lit- 
tle one we remember well ; and it will not be very 
long till the shadows that fell and the substance that 
cast them shall have left here an equal trace. 



GOING ON. 95 

Yes, my readers, we are all changed, as we are 
going on, from what we used to be. And it is no 
wonder we are changed. The wonder is that we are 
not changed a great deal more. How much hard 
work we have done ; how much care, trouble, anx- 
iety, disappointment, we have come through ! What 
painful lessons we have been obliged to learn, every 
one of us ! A great deal of the work we do is merely 
to serve the purposes of the time, and it leaves no 
trace ; but when the work done leaves its tangible 
memorial, it often strikes us much ; and we wonder 
to see how fresh and unwearied the man looks who 
did it all. I have seen the accumulated stock of ser- 
mons of a clergyman of more than forty years in the 
Church. It was awful to see what a vast mass they 
were. And even when we look not at the work of a 
lifetime, but at the results of what was no more than 
part of the work of a few years, we do so with a feel- 
ing of surprise that the man who did it was not at 
the end of his work much changed to appearance 
from what he was when he began it. Some time 
since I got back for a short time the prize essays I 
wrote while at college. They fdled a whole shelf, 
and not a very small shelf. It was awful to look at 
them. They were all written before the writer was 
twenty-two. They were great heavy volumes — 
heavy physically ; and intellectually and gesthetically 
still heavier. I tried to read one, but could not, be- 
cause it was so tiresome ; and I may therefore fairly 



96 GOING ON. 

conclude that no one will ever read them. Yet let 
me confess, that having arranged them on a lower 
shelf, I sat down on a rocking-chair immediately in 
front of them, and looked at them with great interest 
and wonder. In such a prospect, what could one do 
but shake one's head and sigh ? The essays were all 
successful, Mr. Snarling. Every one of those prize 
essays got its prize. It is not in mortification that 
one sighs, but vaguely in the view of such an im- 
mense deal of hard work done to so very small pur- 
pose. And when you look at a man advanced in life, 
whose whole life has been one of hard work, you can- 
not but confusedly wonder to see him looking as he 
does. To see Lord Campbell walking about at Hart- 
rigge, when he had reached the highest place that a 
British subject can reach, — to see the benignant and 
cheerful face of that remarkable man, and then to 
think of the tremendous amount of mental labor he 
had gone through in his long life, was a most perplex- 
ing and bewildering sight. When you are shown a 
ship that has come back from an Arctic voyage, you 
will generally remark that the ship looks like it ; it 
has a weather-beaten and battered aspect, suggestive 
of crunching against icebergs and the like. But 
when you are shown a man whose voyage in life 
has been a long and laborious one, you are sometimes 
surprised to find that he looks as fresh and unwearied 
as if he had done nothing all his life but amuse him- 
self. 



GOING ON. 97 

I have already said that it is a great blessing that 
in this world there are such things as Beginnings and 
Ends. It is a blessing that we can divide our way, 
as we go on, into stages, — that we are saved the wea- 
rying and depressing effect of a very long uniform 
look-out. We begin a succession of tasks ; we end 
them ; — and then we begin afresh. And even those 
things in which, in fact, there are no beginnings nor 
ends, have them in our feeling. The unvarying ad- 
vance of time is broken into days and weeks ; and we 
feel a most decided end on Saturday night, and we 
make a new start on Monday morning. It must be 
dreadful for a man to work straight on, Sunday and 
all other days. I beheve it is impossible that any 
man should do so long. The man who refuses to 
observe a weekly day of rest will knock his head 
against the whole system of things, to the detriment 
of his head. 

But even more valuable than this obvious result of 
the existence of Beginnings and Ends is another. It 
is an unspeakable blessing that a man who has got 
himself thoroughly into a mess anywhere or in any 
occupation, should be able to get away somewhere else 
and begin again. If Mr. Snarling, who has quarrelled 
with all his parishioners in his present charge, were 
removed to another a hundred miles off, I think he 
would take great pains to avoid those acts of folly and 
ill-temper which have made him so unhappy where 
he is. And let me say in addition, that most of us, as 



98 GOING ON. 

we go on, are always in our hearts admitting the im- 
perfection and unsatisfactoriness of our past life. We 
are every now and then, in thought and feeling, be- 
ginning again. Men are every now and then cutting 
off the past ; and acknowledging that they must start, 
or (more commonly) that a little while back they did 
start, anew. You occasionally avow to yourself, my 
reader, though not to the world, that you were a block- 
head even two or three years ago. You occasionally 
say to yourself that your real life begins from this day 
three years. From that date you think you have 
been a great deal wiser and better. That course of 
conduct five years ago ; those opinions you held then, 
that poem, essay, or book you wrote then ; you are 
willing to give up. You have not a word to say for 
them. But that was in a former stage — in a differ- 
ent life. You have begun again since that ; you have 
cut connection with it. You say to yourself, " It may 
be thirty years since I came into the world ; but my 
real life — the part of my life I am willing to avow 
and to answer for — began on the 1st of January, 
1860. I cut off all that preceded. I began again 
then; and as for what I have said and done since 
then, I am ready (as Scotch folk say) to stand on the 
head of it. It is only in a limited sense that I admit 
my identity with the individual who before that date 
bore my name and wore my aspect. I disavow the 
individual. I condemn him as severely as you can 
do." Tell me, my reader, have you not many a time 



GOING ON. 99 

done that? Have you not given up one leaf as hope- 
lessly blotted, and tried to turn over a new one, — cut 
ofF (in short) the preceding days of life and resolved 
to begin again ? Do so, my friend. You may make 
something of the new leaf, but you will never make 
anything of the old one. And whenever you find any 
human being anxious to begin again, always let him 
do it, always help him to do it. Don't do as some 
malicious wretches do, try to make it as difficult and 
humiliating as possible for him to turn over the new 
leaf. Don't try to compel him to a formal declara- 
tion in words that he sees his former life was wrong, 
and wants to break away from it ; it was bitter enough 
for him to make that avowal to himself. You will 
find malicious animals who, if man or child has done 
wrong, and is sorry for it, and wishes to turn into a 
better way, will do all they can to prevent the poor 
creature from quietly turning away from the blurred 
page and beginning the clean one. If there be joy in 
heaven over the repenting sinner, it cannot be denied 
that there is vicious spite over the repenting sinner 
in certain hearts upon earth. Let us not seek to 
make repentance harder than it is by its nature. 
Unhappily there are cases in which neither in fact nor 
in feeling is it possible to begin again, — at least upon 
an unsullied page. There are many people who 
never have a second chance. They must go deeper 
and deeper ; they took the wrong turning, and they can 
never go back. Such is generally the result of crime. 



100 GOING ON. 

There is one sex, at least, with which the one wrong 
step is irretraceable. And even with the ruder half 
of mankind, there are some deeds which, being done, 
shut you in like the spring-lock in poor Ginevra's oak- 
chest. There is no repassing ; and often the irrever- 
sible turning into the wrong track was not the result 
of anything like crime ; often the cause was no more 
than ill-luck, or some foolish word or doing. What 
disproportionate punishment often follows on little acts 
of haste or folly ! In the order of Providence folly 
is often punished much more severely than sin. A 
young fellow, foolishly thinking to gain the favor of 
a sporting patron by exhibiting an extraordinary 
knowledge of the turf and the chase, cuts himself off 
from the living on which his heart was set. A 
flippant word, hardly spoken till it was repented, 
has prejudicially affected a man's whole after-Career. 
Various men, in pique and haste, have made mar- 
riages which blighted all their life, and which brought 
an actual sorer punishment than that with which the 
law visits aggravated bui'glary or manslaughter. It 
is well in most cases to keep a way of retreat. It is 
well that before entering in you should see if you can 
get out, should it prove desirable. You must be veiy 
confident or very desperate if you cut off the bridge 
behind you, when in front there is but to do or to die. 
No doubt a habit of keeping the retreat open is fatal 
to decision of action and character. There is good, 
in one view, in feeling that we have crossed the Rubi- 



GOING ON. 101 

con and are in for it ; then we shall hold stoutly on ; 
otherwise, we may be advancing with only half a 
heart. And there are important cases in which the 
difference between half a heart and a whole one 
makes just the difference between signal defeat and 
splendid victory. 

It is to be admitted, my friends, that as we go on, 
the nonsense is being taken out of us. You have seen 
a horse start upon its journey in a very frisky con- 
dition, kicking about and prancing ; but after a few 
miles it settles into doing its work steadily. That is 
the image which to my mind represents our career, 
going on. The romance has mainly departed. We 
look for homely things, and are content with them. 
Once, too, we expected to do great achievements, but 
not now. We know, generally, our humble mark. 
Indeed, the question as to the earning of bread and 
butter has utterly crowded out of our hearts the ques- 
tion as to the attainment of fame. We would not 
give one pound six and eight pence for wide renown. 
We would not give the eight pence for posthumous 
celebrity. We know our humble mark, I have said. 
I mean intellectually. And it is a great comfort to 
know it. It saves us much fever of competition, of 
suspense, of disappointment. We cannot possibly be 
beaten in the race of ambition ; we cannot even injure 
our lungs or our heart in the race of ambition ; be- 
cause we shall not run it at all. A wise man may be 



102 GOING ON. 

very glad, and very thankful, that he does not think 
himself a great genius, and that he does not think what 
he can do very splendid. For if a man thought him- 
self a great genius, he would be bitterly mortified that 
he was not recognized as such. And if a man thougrht 
his sermons or his books very fine, he would be mor- 
tified that his church was not crammed to suffocation, 
instead of being quite pleased when it is respectably 
filled ; and he w^ould be disappointed that his books 
do not sell by scores of thousands of copies, instead 
of being joyful that about half the first edition sells, 
leaving his publishers or himself only a little out of 
pocket, besides all their time and trouble. I know a 
man of highly respectable talents, who once published 
a theological book. Nobody ever bought a copy ex- 
cept himself. But he bought a good many, which he 
gave to his friends. And then he was extremely 
pleased that so many copies were sold. Was he not 
a wise and modest man ? 

Among other follies, I think that in going on, men, 
if they have any sense at all, get rid of Affectation. 
Few middle-aged men, unless they be by nature in- 
curably silly and conceited, try to walk along the 
street in a dignified and effective way. They wish to 
get quickly and quietly along ; and they have utterly 
discarded the idea that any passer-by thinks it worth 
while to look at them. Generally speaking, they sign 
their names in a natural handwriting. They do not, 
as a rule, look very cheerful. They seem, when 



GOING ON. 103 

silent, to fall into calculations, the result of which is 
not satisfactory. The great tamer of men, is doubt- 
less, the want of money. That is the thing that brings 
people down from their airy flights and romantic im- 
aginations ; especially when there are some depend- 
ent on them. You may dismiss the very rich, who 
never need think and scheme about money, and how 
it is to be got, and how far it can be made to go, as an 
inappreciable fraction of the human race. Care sits 
heavy upon the great majority of those who are going 
on. You know the anxious look, and the inelastic 
step, of most middle-aged people who have children. 
All these things are the result of the want of money. 
Probably the want of money serves great ends in the 
economy of things. Probably it is a needful and es- 
sential spur to work ; and a useful teacher of modesty, 
humility, moderation. No man will be blown up with 
a sense of his own consequence, or walk about fancy- 
ing that he is being pointed out with the finger as the 
illustrious Smith, when (like poor Leigh Hunt) he 
fears lest the baker should refuse to send him bread, 
or that the washerwoman should impound his shirts. 
It is a lamentable story that is set out in the latter 
portions of the " Correspondence " of that amiable but 
unwise man. And human vanity needs a strong 
pressure to keep it within moderate limits. Even the 
wise man, with all his unsparing efforts to keep self- 
conceit down, has latent in him more of it than he 
would like to confess. I lately heard of an outburst 



104 GOING ON. 

of the vanity latent in a decent farmer of moderate 
means. One market day he got somewhat drunk, 
unhappily. And walking home, on the country road, 
he fell into a ditch, wherein he remained. Some of 
his friends found him there, and proceeded to rescue 
him. On approaching him, they found he was pray- 
ing. For though drunk that day, he was really a 
worthy man ; it was quite an exceptional case ; I 
suppose he never got drunk again. They caught 
a sentence of his prayer. It was, " Lord, as Thou 
hast made me great so do Thou make me good / " 
His friends had no idea of the high estimation in 
which the man held himself. He was, in the matter 
of greatness, exactly on the same footing with the 
other people round him. But he did not think so. 
In his secret soul, he fancied himself a very superior 
man. And when his self-restraint was removed by 
■whiskey, the fancy came out. 

But he must have been at least a well-to-do man, 
who had this idea of his own importance. Many men 
are burdened flir too heavily lor that. Very many 
men in this world are bearing just as much as they 
can. A little more would break them down, as the 
last pound breaks the camel's back. When a man is 
loaded with as much work, or suffering, or disappoint- 
ment, as he can bear, a very trifling addition will 
make his burden greater than he can bear. I remem- 
ber how a friend told me of a time when he was pass- 
ing through the greatest trouble of his life. He had 



GOING ON. 105 

met a very heavy trial, but was bearing up wonder- 
fully. One day, only a day or two after the stroke 
had fallen, he was walking along a lonely and rocky 
path, when he tri})ped and fell down, giving his knee 
a severe stunning blow against a rock. He had been 
able to bear up before, though his heart was full. But 
that was the drop too much ; and he broke down and 
cried like a child, though before that he had not shed 
a tear. 

There are various conclusions at which men arrive 
as they go on, which at an earlier part of their journey 
they would have rejected with indignation. One thing 
you will learn, my reader, as you advance, is, what you 
may expect. I mean, in particular, how much you 
may expect from the kindness of your friends; how 
much they are likely to do for you ; how much they 
are likely to put themselves about to serve you. I do 
not say it in the way of finding fault ; but the ordinary 
men of this world are so completely occupied in look- 
ing to their own concerns, that they have no time or 
strength to spare for those of others. And, accord- 
ingly, if you stick in the mud, you had much better, 
in all ordinary cases, try to get out yourself. Nobody 
is likely to help you particularly. Good Samaritans, 
in modern society, are rare ; priests and levites are 
frequent. I lately came to know a man who had 
faithfully and effectually served a certain cause for 
many years. He came at last to a point in his life at 



106 GOING ON. 

which those interested in the cause he had served 
might have greatly helped him. He made sure they 
would. But they simply did nothing. Nobody moved 
a finger to aid that meritorious man. He was morti- 
fied ; but after waiting a little, he proceeded to help 
himself, which he did effectually. I do not think he 
will trust to his friends any more. The truth is, that 
beyond the closest circle of relationship, men in gen- 
eral care very little indeed for each other. I know 
men, indeed, — and I say it with pride and thankful- 
ness, — with whom the case is very different : I re- 
member one who loved his friends as himself, and who 
stood up for them everywhere with a noble devotion. 
I think a good many of them caught from him the im- 
pulse that would have made them do as much for him ; 
but he was one of the truest friends and the noblest- 
hearted men on this earth. Many months are gone 
since he was laid in his grave ; but how many of those 
who will read this page cherish more warmly than 
ever the memory of John Parker! "If I forget 
thee," my beloved friend — you remember David's 
solemn words. But compared with the chance 
acquaintances whom every one knows, he was as a 
Man among Gorillas. And I recur to my principle, 
that beyond closest ties of blood, men in general care 
very little for one another. You have known, I dare 
say, an old gentleman, dying in great suffering through 
many weeks ; but his old club friends did not care at 
all; at most, very little. His suffering and death 



GOING ON. 107 

caused them not the sh'ghtest appreciable concern. 
You may expc^ct certain of your friends to be ex- 
tremely lively and amusing at a dinner-party, on the 
day of your funeral. I remember, a good many years 
ago, feeling very indignant at learning about a gay en- 
tertainment, where was much music and dancing, at- 
tended by a number of young people, on the evening 
of the day on which a fair young companion of them 
all was laid in her last resting-place. I am so many 
years older; yet I confess I have not succeeded in 
schooling myself to feel none of the indignation I then 
felt ; though I have thoroughly got rid of the slightest 
tendency to the surprise I felt in that inexperienced 
time. For, since then, I have seen a young fellow of 
six-and-twenty engaged in a lively flirtation with two 
girls who were in a railway carriage while he was 
standing on the platform, just the day after his moth- 
er's funeral. I have beheld two young ladies decked 
to go out to a ball. Their dresses happily combined a 
most becoming aspect with the expression of a modi- 
fied degree of mourning. They had recently lost a 
i-elative. The relative was their father. I have wit- 
nessed the gayety and the flirtations of a newly-made 
widow. It appeared to me a sorry sight. There are 
human beings, it cannot be denied, whose main char- 
acteristics are selfishness and heartlessness. For it is 
unquestionably true, that the most thorough disregard 
for the feelings, and wishes, and interests of others, 
may coexist with the keenest concern for one's self. 



108 GOING ON. 

You will find people who bear with a heroic constancy 
the sufferings and trials of others ; but who make a 
frightful howling about their own. And, singularly, 
those who never gave sympathy to another mortal, 
expect that other mortals shall evince lively sym- 
pathy with them. Commend me to a thoroughly 
selfish person, for loud complaints of the selfishness 
of others. 

As you go on, you will come to understand how well 
you can be spared from this world. You remember 
Napoleon's axiom, that No man is necessary. There 
is no man in the world whom the world could not do 
without. There are many men who, if they were 
taken away, would be missed ; would be very much 
missed, perhaps, by more or fewer human beings. But 
there is no man but what we may say of him that, 
useful and valuable as he may be, we might, sooner or 
later, with more or less difficulty, come to do without 
him. The country got over the loss of Sir Robert 
Peel and the Duke of Wellington ; it misses Prince 
Albert yet, but it is getting over his absence. I do 
not mean to say that there are not hearts in which 
a worthy human being is always remembered, and 
always missed ; in which his absence is felt as an irrep- 
arable loss, making all life different from what it used 
to be. But in the case of each, these hearts are few. 
And it is quite fit that they should be few. If our 
sympathy with others were as keen as our feeling for 
ourselves, we should get poorly through life ; with 



GOING ON. 109 

many persons sympathy is only too keen and real as 
it is. But though you quite easily see and admit that 
human beings can be spared without much inconven- 
ience, when you think how the State comes to do 
without its lost political chief, and the country without 
its departed hero, you are somewhat apt, till growing 
years have taught you, to cherish some lurking belief 
that you yourself will be missed, and kindly remem- 
bered, longer and by more people than you are ever 
likely to be. A great many clergymen, seeing the 
strong marks of grief evinced by their congregation 
as they preach their farewell sermon before going to 
another parish, can hardly think how quickly the con- 
gregation will get over its loss ; and how soon it will 
come to assemble Sunday by Sunday with no remem- 
brance at all of the familiar face that used to look at 
it from the pulpit, or of the voice which once was 
pleasant to hear. Let no man wilfully withdraw from 
his place in hfe, thinking that he will be missed so 
much that he will be eagerly sought again. If you 
step out of the ranks, the crowd may pass on ; the va- 
cant space may be occupied ; and you may never be 
able to find your place any more. There are far more 
men than there are holes, and all the holes get filled 
up. Who hastily resigned a bishopric ? who in dud- 
geon threw up an Attorney-Generalship? who (think- 
ing he could not be spared) abdicated the Chancellor- 
ship ? And did not each of these men find out his 
mistake ? The holes were filled up, and the men re- 



110 GOING ON. 

mained outsiders ever afterwards. There is a very 
striking story of Hawthorne's, analyzing the motives 
and feelings of a man who, in some whim, went away 
from his house and his wife, but went no farther than 
the next street, and lived there in disguise for many 
years, all his relatives fancying him dead. And the 
eminent American shows, with wonderful power, 
how a human being so acting may make himself the 
outlaw^ of the universe. It needs all your pres- 
ence, all your energy, all your present services, to 
hold you in your place in life, my friend. There 
are certain things whose value is felt through 
their absence ; but I think that, as a general rule, a 
man can make his value felt only by his presence. 

A friend of mine, who is a successful author, told 
me how, when he pubhshed his first book, he made 
quite sure that all his friends would read it, and more 
particularly that all his cousins, to whom he sent cop- 
ies of his book, would do so. But he confided to me, 
as one of the lessons he had arrived at in going on, 
that it is with total strangers that any writer must 
hope for whatever success he may reach. Your cous- 
ins, thinking to mortify you, will diligently refniin 
from reading your volume. At least they will profess 
that they do so ; though you will find them extremely 
well conched up in all the weak and foolish passages 
with which the reviewers have found fault. And 
these passages they will hasten to point out to your 
father and mother, also to your wife, at the same time 



GOING ON. Ill 

expressing their anxious hope that these foolish pas- 
sages may not do you harm. My friend told me how 
in his first book there was a sentence which his cousins 
feared would give offence to a certain eminent person 
who had shown him kindness ; and the promptitude 
with which they could always turn up the passage, 
and the vigorous and fluent manner in which they 
could point out how offensive it must prove to the em- 
inent person, testified to the amount of pains they had 
bestowed upon the discussion of the subject. Among 
the six hundred pages, how easily and swiftly they 
could always find this unlucky page ! My friend told 
me that in a rather popular book of his, there was a 
passage of a few pages in length which had been 
severely criticised. Possibly it was weak ; possibly it 
was absurd. I confess that I read it, and it did not 
strike me as remarkable. However, the critics gener- 
ally attacked it ; and probably they were right. A 
few weeks ago, my friend told me he met a very pretty 
young cousin, of twenty years, for the first time. 
With a radiant smile, the fair cousin began to talk to 
my friend about his efforts in authorship. "Oh, Mr. 
Smith," said she, '• do you know, the only thing I ever 
read in your book was that part where you said " — no 
matter what. " It was so funny ! Do you know. Cousin 
Dick showed it to me the moment I arrived at Ana- 
nias Street ! " I have not the faintest doubt that Cousin 
Dick did. I have myself heard Dick quote a sentence 
from liis relative'.- work, which sounded very flippant 



112 GOING ON. 

and presumptuous. I turned up the page, and re- 
quested Dick to observe that he was (unintentionally, 
but) grossly misrepresenting the passage. It was not 
the least like v/hat he quoted ; and the version given 
by him was altered greatly for the worse. Dick saw 
he was wrong. But several times since have I heard 
him give the incorrect quotation, just as before. Of 
course, his purpose was not to represent his relative 
as a man of taste and sense. 

I think that as we go on we come to have a great 
charity for the misdoings of our fellow-men. There 
are, indeed, flagrant crimes, whose authors can never 
be thought of but with a burning abhorrence. I have 
heard of the doings of men whom I should be happy 
to help to hang. But I am thinking of the little mis- 
doings of social life in a civilized country. As for de- 
liberate cruelty and oppression, as for lying and cheat- 
ing to make money, I never have learned to think of 
them but with a bitterness approaching the ferocious. 
Nor have I grown a bit more charitable with advanc- 
ing years in my estimate of the liar, cheat, and black- 
guard (of whatever rank), who will mislead some poor 
girl to her ruin. I should be glad to burn such a one, 
with this hand, with a red-hot iron, upon the forehead, 
with the word Liar. And something of the emotion 
I feel in the thought of him extends to the thought of 
the young ladies who waltz with him, knowing per- 
fectly what he is ; and to the thought of the parsons 



GOING ON. 113 

who toady him, in hope of a presentation to the 
weahhy hving of Soapy-cnm-Sneaky. But, setting 
these extreme cases aside, you will come, as you go 
on through life, to see some excuse for various little 
misdoings, towards which you felt somewhat bitterly 
in earlier years. You will come to frankly recognize 
the truth, which at first you are slow to admit, that 
there are certain positions which are too much for 
human nature. I mean too much for human nature 
to hold without exhibiting a good deal of pettiness, 
envy, spitefulness, and malevolence ; unless, indeed, 
with very fine and amiable natures. There is an ec- 
clesiasiastical arrangement peculiar to Scotland ; it is 
what is termed a Collegiate Charge. It means that a 
parish church shall have two incumbents of authority, 
dignity, and eminence, exactly similar. The incum- 
bents, in many cases, quarrel outright ; in many more 
they do not work cordially together. In a smaller 
number, indeed, they have been known to be as 
brothers, or as father and son. There is something 
trying in the position of a parish clergyman who has 
a curate, or assistant, who is more popular than him- 
self. You may sometimes find a church poorly at- 
tended when the clergyman preaches, but crowded 
when the curate does so. Even in such a case, if the 
rector be a good man, and the curate another, perfect 
kindliness may exist between the rector and the cu- 
rate ; but I doubt whether that kindliness is much to 
be expected from the rector's wife. And w^hen the 



114 GOING ON. 

curate at length gets a parish of his own,, he need not 
expect that his old principal will often ask him back 
to preach. Now, many people will be found ready to 
speak with much severity of the principal who acts 
thus ; and to blame the clergyman who, not being able 
to fill his church himself, prefers having it empty to 
seeing it filled by any one else. Such people are 
unquestionably wrong. They expect from the poor 
clergyman more than ought to be looked for from 
average human nature. The clergyman's conduct is 
very natural. Put yourself in his place ; look at the 
matter from his point of view. You would not like 
yourself the thing he does not like. You would very 
possibly do exactly what he does. And you might 
do it all quite conscientiously. You might fancy you 
had high and pure reasons for what you did, and that 
there was no intrusion of jealousy. The young cu- 
rate's sermons were, very likely, very crude and ex- 
travagant ; and you may honestly think it your duty 
to prevent your people from being presented with 
spiritual food so immature. And rely upon it, those 
men who carefully exclude from their pulpits all in- 
tresting and attractive preachers, and put there (in 
their own absence) the dullest and poorest preachers 
they can find, though doubtless actuated in great meas- 
ure by a determination that they themselves shall not 
be eclipsed, but shall rather shine by comparison, are 
quite able to persuade themselves that they act from 
the purest motives. But even while you pity the 



GOING ON. 115 

men (let us hope there are very few) in whose mind 
such unworthy considerations have weight, do not 
blame them severely. They are in a difficult posi- 
tion. No doubt they would find it happier as well as 
worthier to spurn the first suggestion of petty jeal- 
ousy ; no doubt the magnanimous man would do so ; 
but there are men who are not magnanimous, and 
who could no more be magnanimous than they could 
be six feet high, or than they could write King Lear. 
Now, my friend, as you go on, j^ou come to under- 
stand all these things. You learn to make great 
allowances for the pettiness of human nature. You 
come to be able to treat with cordiality people to 
whom in your hot and hasty youth you could not 
have spoken without giving them a bit of your mind 
Mdiich they would not have liked to hear. And when 
J say that with advancing years you come to excuse 
human misdoings, I do not .mean that as we grow 
older we come to think more lightly of the difference 
between right and wrong, or between the generous 
and the mean. I hope we know better than that. It 
is another principle that comes into play — the prin- 
ciple, to wit, that not being without sin yourself, you 
should be slow to cast a stone at an erring brother. 
It has been already said that there are cases as to 
which we shall not reason thus. Of heartless and 
deliberate cruelty and treachery we shall never think 
but with fury ; and we do not wish ever to think but 
with fury. Give me the knout, and lead out one of 



116 GOING ON. 

several human beings of whom I have heard, and I 
will warrant you you should hear extensive howling ! 
I am not afraid to plead the highest of all precedents, 
for the permission of the bitterest wrath and for the 
dealing of the sharpest blows. But I humbly and 
firmly trust, my friendly reader, that in you and me 
there is nothing like heartless, dehberate cruelty and 
treachery. We have no sympathy at all with these, 
any more than with the peculiar taste which makes 
worms Hke filth. But as to very much of human 
error and weakness, do you not feel in yourself the 
capacities which (though restrained by God's grace) 
might have brought you to all that ? The thing we 
can least forgive is that which we cannot imagine how 
any one could do — that which we think we have in 
us nothing like. 

In your earlier days, you were perpetually getting 
into scrapes, by speaking hastily and acting hastily. 
As you go on, you learn by experience to avoid these 
things in great measure ; and you learn to be very 
cautious as to the people you will take into your 
confidence. It is a sorrowful lesson of experience, 
but it is a lesson of experience, that there are many 
people to whom you should never say a sentence, with- 
out first calculating wheth(^r that sentence can be 
repeated, or can be misrepresented, to your disad- 
vantage. Like a skilful chess-player, you need to 
consider what may be the result of this move. It is 
to be admitted, that much of worldly wisdom is far 



GOING ON. 117 

from being a pleasing or noble thing. You learn by- 
experience a great deal which it is right you should 
know and act upon, yet which does not ennoble you. 
It is a fine sight, after all, a warm-hearted, outspoken, 
injudicious man of more than middle age ! I know 
well an eminent professor in a certain university, who 
is a very clever and learned man, and a very inju- 
dicious one. I admire his talents and his learning; 
but I feel a warm affection for his outspoken and 
injudicious honesty and truthfulness. I am quite sure 
that if he thought a neighboring marquis a humbug, 
he would call him one. I have the strongest ground 
for believing that if he thought a bishop a fool, he 
would say so. Let us ever try to hold our prudence 
free from the suspicion of baseness. I trust that as 
we go on, we are not coming to practise sneaky arts 
to the end of getting on. Sneakiness, and underhand 
dealing, are doubtless to be reckoned among the arts 
of self-advancement. Honesty is, in many cases, 
unquestionably the very worst policy. But though 
honesty be so, honesty is the right thing, after all ! 
But honest men sometimes think to possess, together, 
two inconsistent things. They think to possess the 
high sense of scrupulous integrity ; and at the same 
time the favor, patronage, and profit, which can be 
had only by parting with that. 

We are all going on : a man here and there is also 
getting on. As you look round upon the people who 



118 GOING ON. 

started with yon, you will discern that even those who 
are doing well in life, for the most part reached their 
utmost elevation before very many years were gone ; 
and for a large tract of time past have not been 
gaining. They are going on, in short : Time makes 
sure that we all shall do that; but they are not 
getting on. Their income is just the same now that 
it was five or ten years since ; and the estimation in 
which they are held by those who know them has 
neither grown nor lessened. But there is a man here 
and there who is growing bigger as well as growing 
older. He is coming, yearly, to be better known ; 
he is gaining in wealth, in influence, in reputation. 
Every walk of life has its rising men. There are 
country gentlemen who gradually elbow their way 
forward among the members of their class, till they 
stand conspicuously apart from them. So with 
painters, authors, barristers, preachers. Who are 
they, among those w^hom I know, who are making 
way, and rising in the world? And M'hat is the 
secret of their success ? I must stop and think. 



CHAPTER V. 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 




N the whole, it was very disagreeable. 
Thus wrote a certain great traveller 
and hunter, summing up an account of 
his position as he composed himself to 
rest upon a certain evening after a hard day's work. 
And no doubt it must have been very disagreeable. 
The night was cold and dark ; and the intrepid 
traveller had to lie down to sleep in the open air, 
without even a tree to shelter him. A heavy shower 
of hail was falling ; each hailstone about the size of 
an egg. The dark air w^as occasionally illuminated 
by forked lightning, of the most appalhng aspect ; 
and the thunder was deafening. By various sounds, 
heard in the intervals of the peals, it seemed evident 
that the vicinity was pervaded by wolves, tigers, 
elephants, wild boars, and serpents. A peculiar 
motion, perceptible under a horsecloth which was 
wrapped up to serve as a pillow, appeared to indicate 
that a snake was wriggling about underneath it. The 
hunter had some ground for thinking that it was a 



120 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

very venomous one ; as indeed in the morning it 
proved to be ; but he was too tired to look. And 
speaking of the general condition of matters upon 
that evening, the hunter stated, with great mildness 
of language, that " it was very di>agreeable." 

Most readers would be disposed to say, that dis- 
agreeable was hardly the right word. No doubt, all 
things that are perilous, horrible, awful, ghastly, dead- 
ly and the like, are disagreeable too. But when we 
use the word disagreeable by itself, our meaning is un- 
derstood to be, that in calling the thing disagreeable, 
we have said the worst of it. A long and tiresome 
sermon is disagreeable ; but a venomous snake under 
your pillow passes beyond being disagreeable. To 
have a tooth stopped, is disagreeable ; to be broken 
on the wheel (though nobody could like it), transcends 
that. If a thing be horrible and awful, you would not 
say it was disagreeable. The greater includes the 
less ; as when a human being becomes entitled to 
write D. D. after his name, he drops all mention of 
the M. A. borne in preceding years. 

Let this truth be remembered, by such as shall read 
the following pages. We are to think about Disagree- 
able People. Let it be understood that (speaking 
generally) we are to think of people who are no worse 
than disagreeable. It cannot be denied, even by the 
most prejudiced, that murderers, pirates, slave-drivers, 
and burglars, are disagreeable. The cut-throat ; the 
poisoner ; the sneaking blackguard who shoots his 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 121 

landlord from beliind a hedge, are no doubt disagree- 
able people ; so very disagreeable that in this country 
the common consent of mankind removes them from 
human society by the instrumentality of a halter. But 
disagreeable is too mild a word. Such people are all 
that, and a great deal more. And accordingly, they 
stand beyond the range of this dissertation. We are 
to treat of folk who are disagreeable ; and not worse 
than disagreeable. We may sometimes, indeed, over- 
step the boundary line. But it is to be remembered, 
that there are people who in the main are good peo- 
ple, who yet are extremely disagreeable. And a far- 
ther complication is introduced into the subject by the 
fact, that some people who are far from good, are yet 
unquestionably agreeable. You disapprove them ; but 
you cannot help liking them. Others, again, are sub- 
stantially good ; yet you are angry with yourself to ' 
find that you cannot like them. 

I take for granted that all observant human beings 
will admit that in this world there are disagreeable 
people. Probably the distinction which presses itself 
most strongly upon our attention as we mingle in the 
society of our fellow-men, is the distinction between 
agreeable people and disagreeable. There are various 
tests, more or less important, which put all mankind 
to right and left. A fiimiliar division is into rich and 
poor. Thomas Paine, with great vehemence, denied 
the propriety of that classification ; and declared that 



122 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

the only true and essential classification of mankind 
is into male and female. I have read a story whose 
author maintained, that, to his mind, by far the most 
interesting and thorough division of our race is into 
such as have been hanged and such as have not been 
hanged ; he himself belonging to the former class. 
But we all, more or less, recognize and act upon the 
great classification of all human beings into the agree- 
able and the disagreeable. And we begin very early 
to recognize and act upon it. Very early in life, the 
little child understands and feels the vast difference 
between people who are nice, and people who are not 
nice. In schoolboy days, the first thing settled as to 
any new acquaintance, man or boy, is on which side 
he stands of the great boundary line. It is not genius, 
not scholarship, not wisdom, not strength nor speed, 
that fixes the man's place. None of these things is 
chiefly looked to ; the question is, Is he agreeable or 
disagreeable ? And according as that question is de- 
cided, the man is described, in the forcible language 
of youth, as " a brick," or as " a beast." 

Yet it is to be remembered, that the division be- 
tween the agreeable and disagreeable of mankind, is 
one which may be transcended. It is a scratch on the 
earth ; not a ten-foot wall. And you will find men 
who pass from one side of it to the other ; and back 
again ; probably several times in a week, or even in a 
day. There are people whom you never know where 
to have. They are constantly skipping from side to 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 123 

side of that line of demarcation ; or they even walk 
along with a foot on each side of it. There are peo- 
ple who are always disagreeable ; and disagreeable to 
all men. There are people who are agreeable at some 
times, and disagreeable at others. There are people 
who are agreeable to some men and disagreeable to 
other men. I do not intend by the last-named class, 
people who intentionally make themselves agreeable 
to a certain portion of the race, to which they think it 
worth while to make themselves agreeable ; and who 
do not take that trouble in the case of the remainder 
of liumankind. What I mean is this : that there are 
people who have such an affinity and sympathy with 
certain other people ; who so suit certain other people ; 
that they are agreeable to these other people ; though 
perhaps not particularly so to the race at large. And 
exceptional tastes and likings are often the strongest. 
The thing you like enthusiastically, another man ab- 
solutely loathes. The thing which all men like, is for 
the most part liked with a mild and subdued liking. 
Everybody likes good and well-made bread ; but no- 
body goes into raptures over it. Few persons like 
caviare ; but those who like it are very fond of it. I 
never knew but one being who liked mustard with 
apple-pie ; but that solitary man ate it with avidity, 
and praised the flavor with enthusiasm. 

But it is impossible to legislate for every individual 
case. Every rule must have exceptions from it ; but 
it would be foolish to resolve to lay down no more 



124 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

rules. There may be, somewhere, the man who likes 
Mr. Snarling ; and to that man Mr. Snarling would 
doubtless be agreeable. But for practical purposes, 
Mr. Snarling may justly be described as a disagree- 
able man, if he be disagreeable to nine hundred and 
ninety-nine mortals out of every thousand. And w^ith 
precision sufficient for the ordinary business of life, 
we may say that there are people who are essentially 
disagreeable. 

There are people who go through life, leaving an 
unpleasant influence on all whom they come near. 
You are not at your ease in their society. You feel 
awkward and constrained while with them. That is 
probably the mildest degree in the scale of unpleasant- 
ness. There are people who disseminate a much 
worse influence. As the upas-tree was said to blight 
all the country round it, so do these disagreeable folk 
prejudicially affect the whole surrounding moral at- 
mosphere. They chill all warmth of heart in thos^e 
near them ; they put down anything generous or mag- 
nanimous ; they suggest unpleasant thoughts and asso- 
ciations ; they excite a diverse and n*umerous array 
of bad tempers. The great evil of disagreeable peo- 
ple lies in this : that they tend powerfully to make 
other people disagreeable too. And these people are 
not necessarily bad people, though they produce a bad 
effect. It is not certain that they design to be disa- 
greeable. There are those who do entertain that 
design ; and they always succeed in carrying it out. 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 125 

Nobody ever tried diligently to be disagreeable, and 
failed. Such persons may indeed inflict much less 
annoyance than they wished ; they may even fail of 
inflicting any pain whatever on others ; but they make 
themselves as disgusting as they could desire. And 
in many cases, they succeed in inflicting a good deal 
of pain. A very low, vulgar, petty, and uncultivated 
nature, may cause much suffering to a lofty, noble, 
and refined one ; particularly if the latter be in a posi- 
tion of dependence or subjection. A wretched hornet 
may madden a noble horse ; a contemptible mosquito 
may destroy the night's rest which would have re- 
cruited a noble brain. But without any evil inten- 
tion ; sometimes with the very kindest intention ; 
there are those who worry and torment you. It is 
through want of perception ; w-ant of tact ; coarseness 
of nature ; utter lack of power to understand you. 
Were you ever sitting in a considerable company, a 
good deal saddened by something you did not choose to 
tell to any one, and probably looking dull and dispir- 
ited enough ; and did a fussy host or hostess draw the 
attention of the entire party upon you, by earnestly 
and repeatedly asking if you were ill, if you had a 
headache, because you seemed so dull and so unlike 
yourself? And did that person time after time return 
to the charge, till you would have liked to poison him? 
There is nothing more disagreeable, and few things 
more mischievous, than a well-meaning, meddling fool. 
And where there was no special intention, good or 



126 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

bad, towards yourself, you have known people make 
you uncomfortable through the simple exhibition to 
you, and pressure upon you, of their own inherent dis- 
agreeableness. You have known people after talking 
to whom for awhile, you felt disgusted with every- 
thing ; and above all, with those people themselves. 
Talking to them, you felt your moral nature being rub- 
bed agamst the grain ; being stung all over with net- 
tles. You showed your new house and furniture to 
such a man ; and with eagle eye he traced out and 
pointed out every scratch on your fine fresh paint, 
and every flaw in your oak and walnut. He showed 
you that there were corners of your big mirrors that 
distort your face ; that there were bits of your grand 
marble mantel-pieces that might be expected soon to 
scale away. Or you have known a man who, with no 
evil intention, made it his practice to talk of you be- 
fore your face, as your other friends are accustomed 
to talk of you behind your back. It need not be said 
that the result is anything but pleasant. " What a 
fool you were. Smith, in saying that at Snooks's last 
night," your friend exclaims when you meet him next 
morning. You were quite aware, by this time, that 
what you said was foolish ; but there is something 
grating in hearing your name connected with the un- 
pleasant name. I would strongly advise any man, 
who does not wish to be set down as disagreeable, 
entirely to break off the habit (if he has such a habit) 
of addressing to even his best friends any sentence 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 127 

beginning with " What a fool you were." Let me 
offer the like advice as to sentences which set out as 
follows : " I say, Smith, I think your brother is the 
jireatest fool on the face of the earth." Stop that 
kind of thing, my friend ; or you may come to be 
classed with Mr. Snarling. You are probably a 
manly fellow, and a sincere friend ; and for the sake 
of your substantial good qualities, one would stand a 
great deal. But over-frankness is disagreeable ; and 
if you make over-frankness your leading characteris- 
tic, of course your entire character will come to be 
a disagreeable one ; and you will be a disagreeable 
person. 

Besides the people who are disagreeable through 
malignant intention, and through deficiency of seiv 
sitiveness, there are other people who are disagreeable 
through pure ill-luck. It is quite certain that there 
are people wdiom evil fortune dogs through all their 
life: who are thoroughly and hopelessly unlucky. 
And in no respect have we beheld a man's ill-luck so 
persecute him, as in the matter of making him (with- 
out the slightest evil purpose, and even when he is 
most anxious to render himself agreeable), render 
himself extremely disagreeable. Of course there must 
be some measure of thoughtlessness and forgetfulness ; 
some lack of that social caution so indispensable in the 
complication of modern society, which teaches a man 
(so to speak) to try if the ice will bear him before 
venturing his entire weight upon it ; about people who 



128 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

are unlucky in the way of which I am speaking. But 
doubtless you have known persons who were always 
saying disagreeable things, or putting disagreeable 
questions; either through forgetfulness of things which 
they ought to have remembered, or through unhappily 
chancing on forbidden ground. You will find a man, 
a thoughtless but quite good-natured man, begin at a 
dinner-table to relate a succession of stories very much 
to the prejudice of somebody ; while somebody's daugh- 
ter is sitting opposite him. And you will find the 
man quite obtuse to all the hints by which the host or 
hostess tries to stop him ; and going on to particulars 
worse and worse ; till in terror of what all this might 
grow to, the hostess has to exclaim, " Mr. Smith, you 
won't take a hint ; that is Mr. Somebody's daughter 
sitting opposite you." It is quite essential that any 
man, whose conversation consists mainly of observa- 
tions not at all to the advantage of some absent ac- 
quaintance, should carefully feel his way before giv- 
ing full scope to his malice and his invention, in the 
presence of any general company. And before mak- 
ing any playful reference to halters, you should be 
clear that you are not talking to a man whose grand- 
father was hanged. Nor should you venture any 
depreciatory remarks upon men who have risen from 
the ranks, unless you are tolerably versed in the fam- 
ily history of those to whom you are talking. You 
may have heard a man very jocular upon lunatic asy- 
lums, to another who had several brothers and sisters 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 129 

in one. And though in some cases, human beings may- 
render themselves disagreeable through a combination 
of circumstances which really absolves them from all 
blame ; yet, as a general rule, the man who is disa- 
greeable through ill-luck is at least guilty of culpable 
carelessness. 

You have probably, my reader, known people who 
had the faculty of making themselves extremely 
agreeable. You have known one or two men who, 
whenever you met them, conveyed to you by a re- 
markably frank and genial manner, an impression 
that they esteemed you as one of their best and dear- 
est friends. A vague idea took possession of your 
mind, that they had been longing to vSee you ever 
since they saw you last : which in all probability was 
six or twelve months previously. And during all 
that period it may be regarded as quite certain, that 
the thought of you had never once entered their 
mind. Such a manner has a vast effect upon young 
and inexperienced folk. The inexperienced man fan- 
cies that this manner, so wonderfully frank and friend- 
ly, is reserved specially for himself ; and is a recog- 
nition of his own special excellences. But the man 
of greater experience has come to suspect this man- 
ner, and to see through it. He has discovered that 
it is the same to everybody : at least, to everybody 
to whom it is thought worth while to put it on. And 
he no more thinks of arguing the existence of any 
9 



130 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

particular liking for himself, or of any particular 
merit in himself, from that friendly manner ; than 
he thinks of believing, on a warm summer day, that 
the sun has a special liking for himself, and is look- 
ing so beautiful and bright all for himself. It is per- 
haps unjust to accuse the man, always overflowing in 
geniality upon everybody he meets, of being an im- 
postor or humbug. Perhaps he does feel an irrepres- 
sible gush of love to all his race ; but why convey to 
each individual of the race that he loves him more 
than all the others ? 

Yet it is to be admitted, that it is always well that 
a man should be agreeable. Pleasantness is always a 
pleasing thing. And a sensible man, seeking by hon- 
est means to make himself agreeable, will generally 
succeed in making himself agreeable to sensible men. 
But although there is an implied compliment, to your 
power if not to your personality, in the fact of a 
man's taking pains to make himself agreeable to you ; 
it is certain that he may try to make himself so by 
means of which the upshot will be, to make him in- 
tensely disagreeable. You know the fawning, sneak- 
ing manner which an occasional shopkeeper adopts. 
It is most disagreeable to, right-thinking people. Let 
him remember that he is also a man ; and let his 
manner be manly as well as civil. It is an awful and 
humiliating sight, a man who is always squeezing 
himself together like a whipped dog whenever you 
speak to him ; grinning and bowing ; and (in a moral 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 131 

sense) wriggling about before you on the earth, and 
begging you to wipe your feet on his head. You 
cannot help thinking that the sneak would be a ty- 
rant if he had the o})portunity. It is pleasant to find 
people in the humblest position, blending a manly in- 
dependence of demeanor with the regard justly due to 
those placed by Providence farther up the social scale. 
Yet doubtless there are persons to whom the sneak- 
iest manner is agreeable ; who enjoy the flattery and 
the humiliation o'f the wretched toady who is always 
ready to tell them that they are the most beautiful, 
graceful, witty, well-informed, aristocratic-looking, and 
generally-beloved, of the human race. You must re- 
member that it depends very much upon the nature 
of a man himself, whether any particular demeanor 
shall be agreeable to him or not. And you know 
well that a cringing, toadying manner, which would 
be thoroughly disgusting to a person of sense, may 
be extremely agreeable and delightful to a self-con- 
ceited idiot. Was there not an idiotic monarch, who 
was greatly pleased when his courtiers, in speaking 
to him, affected to veil their eyes with their hands, as 
unable to bear the insufferable effulgence of his coun- 
tenance ? And would not a monarch of sense have 
been ready to kick the people who thus treated him 
like a fool ? And every one has observed that there 
are silly women who are much gratified by coarse and 
fulsome compliments upon their personal appearance, 
which would be regarded as grossly insulting by a 



132 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

woman of sense. You may have heard of country 
gentlemen, of Radical politics, who had seldom wan- 
dered beyond their paternal acres (by their paternal 
acres I mean the acres they had recently bought), 
and who had there grown into a fixed belief that they 
were among the noblest and mightiest of the earth ; 
who thought their parish clergyman an agreeable 
man if he voted at the county election for the candi- 
date they supported, though that candidate's politics 
were directly opposed to those of the parson. These 
individuals, of course, would hold their clergyman as 
a disagreeable man, if he held by his own principles ; 
and quite declined to take their wishes into account 
in exercising the trust of the franchise. Now of 
course a nobleman or gentleman of right feeling, 
would regard the parson as a turncoat and sneak, 
who should thus deny his convictions. Yes : there is 
no doubt that you may make yourself agreeable to 
unworthy folk, by unworthy means. A late notori- 
ous Marquis declared on his dying bed, that a two- 
legged animal of human pretensions, who had acted 
as his valet, and had aided that hoary reprobate in 
the gratification of his peculiar tastes, was " an ex- 
cellent man." And you may remember how Buike 
said that as we learn that a certain Mr. Russell made 
himself very agreeable to Henry the Eighth, we may 
reasonably suppose that Mr. Russell was himself (in a 
humble degree) something like his master. Proba- 
blv to most right-minded men, the fact that a man 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 133 

was agreeable to Henry the Eighth, or to the Marquis 
in question, or to Belial, Beelzebub, or Apollyon, 
would tend to make that man remarkably disagree- 
able. And let the reader remember the guarded way 
in which the writer laid down his general principle as 
to pleasantness of character and demeanor. I said 
that a sensible man, seeking by honest means to 
make himself agreeable, will generally succeed in 
making; himself agreeable to sensible men. I ex- 
elude from the class of men to be esteemed agree- 
able, those who would disgust all but fools or black- 
guards. I exclude parsons who express heretical 
views in theology, in the presence of a patron known 
to be a free-thinker. I exclude men who do great 
folk's dirty work. I exclude all toad-eaters, sneaks, 
flatterers, and fawning impostors ; from the schoolboy 
who thinks to gain his master's favor by voluntarily 
bearing tales of his companions, up to the bishop who 
declared that he regarded it not merely as a constitu- 
tional principle but as an ethical fact, that the King 
could do no wrong ; and the other bishop who de- 
clared that the reason why George the Second died, 
was that this world was not good enough for him, and 
it was necessary to transfer him to heaven that he 
might be the right man in the right place. Such per- 
sons may succeed in making themselves agreeable to 
the man with whom they desire to ingratiate them- 
selves, provided that man be a fool or a knave ; but 
they assuredly render themselves disagreeable, not to 



134 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

say revolting, to all human beings whose good opinion 
is worth the possessing. And though any one who is 
not a fool will generally make himself agreeable to 
people of ordinary temper and nervous system if he 
wishes to do so ; it is to be remembered that too in- 
trusive attempts to be agreeable often make a man 
very disagreeable ; and likewise, that a man is the 
reverse of agreeable if you see that he is trying by 
managing and humoring you to make himself agree- 
able to you. I mean, if you can see that he is smooth- 
ing you down, and agreeing with you, and trying to 
get you on your blind side, as if he thought you a 
baby or a lunatic. And there is all the difference in 
the world, between the frank hearty wish in man or 
woman to be agreeable ; and this diplomatic and in- 
direct way. No man likes to think that he is being 
managed as Mr. Rarey might manage an unbroken 
colt. And though many human beings must in fact 
be thus managed ; though a person of a violent or a 
sullen temper, or of a wrong head, or of outrageous 
vanity, or of invincible prejudices, must be managed 
very much as you would manage a lunatic (being, in 
fact, removed from perfect sanity upon these points) ; 
still, they must never be allowed to discern that they 
are being managed ; or the charm will fail at once. 
I confess, for myself, that I am no believer in the 
efficacy of diplomacy and indirect ways in dealing 
with one's fellow-creatures. I believe that a manly, 
candid, straightforward course is always the best. 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 135 

Treat people in a perfectly frank manner : with 
frankness not put on, but real ; and you will be 
agreeable to most of those to whom you would de- 
sire to be so. 

My reader, I am now about to tell you of certain 
sorts of human beings, who appear to me as worthy 
of being ranked among disagreeable people. I do not 
pretend to give you an exhaustive catalogue of such. 
Doubtless you have your own black beasts, your own 
special aversions, which have for you a disagreeable- 
ness beyond the understanding or sympathy of others. 
Nor do I make quite sure that you will agree with me 
in all the views which I am going to set forth. It 
is not impossible that you may regard as very nice 
people. Or even as quite fascinating and enthralling 
people, certain people whom I regard as intensely 
disagreeable. Let me begin with an order of human 
beings, as to which I do not expect every one who 
reads this page to go along with me ; though I do not 
know any opinion which I hold more resolutely than 
that which I am about to express. 

We all understand the kind of thing which is meant 
by people who talk of Muscular Ghristianity. It is 
certainly a noble and excellent thing to make people 
discern that a good Christian need not be a muiF 
(pardon the slang term : there is no otlier that would 
bring out my meaning). It is a fine thing to make 
it plain that manliness and dash may coexist with 
pure morality and sincere piety. It is a line thing to 



136 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

make young fellows comprehend that there is nothing 
fine and manly in being bad ; and nothing unmanly in 
being good. And in this view, it is impossible to 
value too higlily such characters and such biographies 
as those of Hodson of Hodson's Horse and of Cap- 
tain Hedley Vicars. It is a splendid combination, 
pluck and daring in their highest degree, with an 
unaffected and earnest regard to religion and religious 
duties : in short, muscularity with Cliristianity. A 
man consists of body and soul : and both would be in 
their ideal perfection, if the soul were decidedly 
Christian, and the body decidedly muscular. 

But there are folk whose admiration of the mus- 
cularity is very great ; but whose regard for the 
Christianity is very small. They are captivated by 
the dash and glitter of physical pluck ; they are quite 
content to accept it wiihout any Christianity; and 
even without the most ordinary morality and decency. 
They appear, indeed, to think that the grandeur 
of" the character is increased, by the combination of 
thorough blackguardism with high physical qualifica- 
tions ; their gospel, in short, may be said to be that of 
Unchristian Muscularity. And you will find various 
books in which the hero is such a man ; and while the 
wi-iter of the book frankly admits that he is in strict 
morality an extremely bad man, the writer slill recalls 
his doings with such manifest gusto and sympathy, 
and takes such pains to make him agreeable on the 
whole, and relates with such approval the admiration 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 137 

which empty-headed idiots express for him when he 
has jumped his horse over some very perilous fence 
or thrashed some insolent farmer, that it is painfully 
apparent what is the writer's ideal of a grand and 
imposing character. You know the kind of man who 
is the hero of some novels : the muscular blackguard ; 
and you remember what are his unfailing charac- 
teristics. He has a deep chest. He has huge arms 
and l;mbs : the muscles being knotted. He has an 
immense moustache. He has (God knows why) a 
serene contempt for ordinary mortals. He is always 
growing black with fury, and bullying weak men. 
On such occasions, his lips may be observed to be 
twisted into an evil sneer. He is a seducer and 
liar : he has ruined various women, and had special 
facilities for becoming acquainted with the rottenness 
of society ; and occasionally he expresses, in language 
of the most profane, not to say blasphemous character, 
a momentary regret for having done so much harm ; 
such as the Devil might sentimentally have expressed 
when he had succeeded in misleading our first pa- 
rents. Of course he never pays tradesmen for the 
things with which they supply him. He can drink an 
enormous quantity of wine without his head becoming 
affected. He looks down with entire disregard on the 
laws of God and man, as made for inferior beings. As 
for any worthy moral quality ; as for anything beyond 
a certain picturesque brutality and bull-dog disregard 
of danger ; not a trace of such a thing can be found 
about him. 



138 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

We all know, of course, that such a person, though 
not uncommon in novels, very rarely occurs in real 
life ; and if he occur at all, it is with his ideal perfec- 
tions very much toned down. In actual life, such a 
hero would become known in the Insolvent Court, and 
would frequently appear before the police magistrates. 
He would eventually become a billiard-marker; and 
might ultimately be hanged, with general approval. 
If the man, in his undipped proportions, did actually 
exist, it would be right that a combination should be 
formed to wipe him out of creation. He should be 
put down : as you would put down a tiger or a rattle- 
snake if found at liberty somewhere in the Midland 
Counties. A more hateful character, to all who 
possess a grain of moral discernment, could not even 
be imagined. And it need not be shown, that the 
conception of such a character is worthy only of a 
baby. However many years the man who deliber- 
ately and admiringly delineates such a person may 
have lived in this world, intellectually he cannot be 
more than about seven years old. And none but 
calves the most immature can possibly sympathize 
with him. Yet if there were not many silly persons 
to whom such a character is agreeable, such a charac- 
ter would not be portrayed. And it seems certain 
that a single exhibition of strength or daring will 
to some minds be the compendium of all good qual- 
ities : or (more accurately speaking) the equivalent 
for them. A muscular blackguard clears a high 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 139 

fence ; he does precisely that, neither more nor less. 
And upon the strength of that single achievement, the 
servants of the house where he is visiting declare that 
they would follow him over the woild. And you 
may find various young women, and various women 
who wish to pass for young, who would profess, and 
perhaps actually feel, a like enthusiasm for the mus- 
cular blackguard. I confess that I cannot find words 
strong enough to express my contempt and abhorrence 
for the theory of life and character which is assumed 
by the writers who describe such blackguards, and by 
the fools who admire them. And though very far 
from saying or thinking that the kind of human being 
who has been, described, is no worse than disagreeable, 
I assert with entire confidence that to all right-think- 
ing men, he is more disagreeable than almost any 
other kind of human being. And I do not know any 
single lesson you could instil into a youthful mind, 
which would be so mischievous, as the lesson that the 
muscular blackguard should be regarded with any 
other feeling than that of pure loathing and disgust. 
But let us have done with him. I cannot think of the 
books which delineate him, and ask you to admire 
him, without indignation more bitter than I wish to 
feel in writing such a page. 

And passing to the consideration of human beings 
who though disagreeable, are good in the main ; it 
may be laid down, as a general principle, that any 
person, however good, is disagreeable, from whom 



140 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

you feel it a relief to get away. We have all known 
people, thoroughly estimable, and whom you could not 
but respect, in whose presence it was impossible to 
feel at ease ; and whose absence was felt as the with- 
drawal of a sense of constraint of the most oppressive 
kind. And this vague, uncomfortable influence, which 
breathes from some men, is produced in various ways. 
Sometimes it is the result of mere stiffness and 
awkwardness of manner ; and there are men whose 
stiffness and awkwardness of manner are such as 
would freeze the most genial and silence the frank- 
est. Sometimes it arises from ignorance of social 
rules and proprieties ; sometimes from incapacity to 
take, or even to comprehend, a joke. Sometimes it 
proceeds from a pettedness of nature, which keeps 
you ever in fear that offence may be taken at the 
most innocent word or act. Sometimes it comes of 
a preposterous sense of his own standing and impor- 
tance, existing in a man whose standing and impor- 
tance are very small. It is quite wonderful what 
very great folk, very little folk will sometimes fancy 
themselves to be. The present writer has had little 
opportunity of conversing with men of great rank and 
power. Yet he has conversed with certain men of 
the very greatest ; and he can say sincerely that he 
has found head-stewards to be much more dignified 
men than dukes ; and parsons of no earthly reputa- 
tion, and of very limited means, to be infinitely more 
stuck-up than archbishops. And though at first the 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 141 

airs of stuck-up small men are amazingly ridiculous, 
and so rather amusing ; they speedily become so ir- 
ritating, that the men who exhibit them cannot be 
classed otherwise than with the disagreeable of the 
earth. 

Few people are more disagreeable than the man 
who (you know) is, while you are conversing with 
him, taking a mental estimate of you ; more particu- 
larly of the soundness of your doctrinal views ; with 
the intention of showing you up if you be wrong, and 
of inventing or misrepresenting something to your 
prejudice if you be right. Whenever you find any 
man trying (in a moral sense) to trot you out^ and 
examine your paces, and pronounce upon your gen- 
eral soundness ; there are two courses you may fol- 
low. The one is, severely to shut him up ; and stern- 
ly make him understand that you don't choose to be 
inspected by him. Show him that you will not ex- 
hibit for his approval your particular views about the 
Papacy, or about Moral Inability, or about Pelagian- 
ism or the Patripassian heresy. Indicate that you will 
not be pumped ; and you may convey, in a kindly 
and polite way, that you really don't care a rush what 
he thinks of you. The other course is, with deep 
solemnity and an unchanged countenance, to horrify 
your inspector by avowing the most fearful views. 
Tell him that on long reflection, you are prepared to 
advocate the revival of Cannibalism. Say that prob- 
ably something may be said for Polygamy. Defend 



142 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

the Thngs, and say something for Mumbo Jumbo. 
End by saying that no doubt black is white, and twice 
ten are fifty. Or a third way of meeting such a man, 
is suddenly to turn upon him, and ask him to give 
you a brief and lucid account of the views he is con- 
demning. Ask him to tell you what are the theologi- 
cal peculiarities of Bunsen ; and what is the exact 
teaching of Mr. Maurice. He does not know, you 
may be tolerably sure. In the case of the latter em- 
inent man, I never met anybody who did know ; and 
I have the firmest belief that he does not know him- 
self I was told, lately, of an eminent foreigner, who 
came to Britain to promote a certain public end. For 
its promotion, the eminent man wished to conciliate 
the sympathies of a certain small class of religionists. 
He procured an introduction to a leading man among 
them ; a good, but very stupid and self-conceited man. 
This man entered into talk with the eminent foreign- 
er ; and ranged over a multitude of topics, political 
and religious. And at an hour's end the foreigner 
Avas astonished by the good but stupid man suddenly 
exclaiming : " Now, sir, I have been reckoning vou 
up ; you won't do ; you are a " — no matter what. It 
was something that had nothing earthly to do with 
the end to be promoted. The religious demagogue 
had been trotting out the foreigner ; and he had found 
him unsound. The religious demagogue belonged to 
a petty sect, no doubt ; and he was trying for his 
wretched little Shibboleth. But you may have seen 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 143 

the like, even with leading men in National Churches. 
And I have seen a pert little whippersnapper ask a 
venerable clergyman what he thought of a certain 
outrageous lay-preacher ; and receive the clergyman's 
reply that he thought most unfavorably of many of 
the lay-preacher's doings, with a self-conceited smirk 
that seemed to say to the venerable clergyman, " I 
have been reckoning you up ; you won't do." 

People whom you cannot get to attend to you when 
you talk to them, are disagreeable. There are men 
whom you feel it is vain to speak to ; whether you are 
mentioning facts, or stating arguments. All the while 
you are speaking, they are thinking of what they are 
themselves to say next. There is a strong current, as 
it were, settirtg outward from their minds ; and it pre- 
vents what you say from getting in. You know, if a 
pipe be full of water, running strongly one way, it is 
vain to think to push in a stream running the other 
way. You cannot get at their attention. You cannot 
get at the quick of their mental sensoriura. It is not 
the dull of hearing whom it is hardest to get to hear : 
it is rather the man who is roaring out himself, and so 
who cannot attend to anything else. Now this is pro- 
voking. It is a mortifying indication of the little im- 
portance that is attached to what we are saying ; and 
there is something of the irritation that is produced in 
the living being by contending with the passive resist 
ance of inert matter. And there is something provok- 
ing even in the outward signs that the mind is in a 



144 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

non-receptive state. You remember tlie eye that is 
looking beyond you ; the grin that is not at anything 
funny in what you say ; the occasional inarticulate 
sounds that are put in at the close of your sentences, 
as if to delude you with a show of attention. The 
non-receptive mind is occasionally found in clever 
men ; but the men who exhibit it are invariably very 
conceited. They can think of nothing but themselves. 
And you may find the last-named characteristic strongly 
developed, even in men with gray hair, who ought to 
have learned better through the experience of a pretty 
long life. There are other minds which are very re- 
ceptive. They seem to have a strong power of suc- 
tion. They take in, very decidedly, all that is said to 
them. The best mind, of course, is that which com- 
bines both characteristics ; which is strongly receptive 
when it ought to be receiving ; and which gives out 
strongly when it ought to be giving out. The power 
of receptivity is greatly increased by habit. I re- 
member feeling awe-stricken by the intense attention 
with wliich a very great Judge was wont, in ordinary 
conversation, to listen to all that was said to him. It 
was the habit of the judgment-seat, acquired through 
many years of listening, with every faculty awake, to 
the arguments addressed to him. But when you be- 
gan to make some statement to him, it was positively 
alarming to see him look you full \n the face, and lis- 
ten with inconceivable fixedness of attention to all you 
said. You could not help feeling that really the small 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 145 

remark you had to make was not worth that great 
mind's grasping it so intently, as he might have grasped 
an argument by Follett. The mind was intensely re- 
ceptive, when it was receiving at all. But I remem- 
ber, too, that when the great Judge began to speak, 
then his mind was, (so to speak,) streaming out ; and 
he was particularly impatient of inattention or inter- 
ruption ; and particularly non-receptive of anything 
that might be suggested to him. 

It is extremely disagreeable when a vulgar fellow, 
whom you hardly know, addresses you by your sur- 
name with great familiarity of manner. And such a 
person will take no hint that he is disagreeable ; how- 
ever stiff, and however formally polite, you may take 
pains to be to him. It is disagreeable when persons, 
with whom you have no desire to be on terms of inti- 
macy, persist in putting many questions to you as to 
your private concerns ; such as your annual income 
and expenditure, and the like. No doubt, it is both 
pleasant and profitable for people who are not rich, to 
compare notes on these matters with some frank and 
hearty friend, whose means and outgoings are much 
the same as their own. I do not think of such "a case ; 
but of the prying curiosity of persons who have no 
right to pry, and who, very generally, while diligently 
prying into your affairs, take special care not to take 
you into their confidence. Such people, too, while 
making a pretence of revealing to you all their secrets, 
will often tell a very small portion of them, and make 
10 



146 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

various statements wliicli you at the time are quite 
aware are not true. There are not many things more 
disagreeable than a very stupid and ill-set old woman, 
who, quite unaware what her opinion is worth, ex- 
presses it with entire confidence upon many subjects 
of which she knows nothing whatever, and as to which 
she is wholly incapable of judging. And the self- 
satisfied and confident air with which she settles the 
most difficult questions, and pronounces unfavorable 
judgment upon people ten thousand times wiser and 
better than herself, is an insuffei'ably irritating phe- 
nomenon. It is a singular fact, that the people I have 
in view invariably combine extreme ugliness with 
spitefulness and self-iconceit. Such a person will 
make particular inquiries of you as to some near rel- 
ative of your own ; and will add, with a malicious and 
horribly ugly expression of face, that she is glad to 
hear how very much, improved your relative now is. 
She will repeat the sentence several times, laying 
great emphasis and significance upon the vei^y much 
improved. Of course, the notion conveyed to any 
stranger who may be present, is that your relative 
must in former days have been an extremely bad 
fellow. The fact probably is, that he has always, man 
and boy, been particuhirly well-behaved ; and that 
really you were not aware that he needed any special 
improvement ; save indeed in the sense that every 
human being might be and ought to be a great deal 
better than he is. 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 147 

People who are always vaporing about their own 
importance, and the value of their own possessions, 
are disagreeable. We all know such people ; and 
they are made more irritating by the fact, that their 
boasting is almost invariably absurd and false. I do 
not mean ethically false, but logically false. For 
doubtless, in many cases, human beings honestly think 
themselves and their possessions as much better than 
other men and their possessions ; as they say they do. 
If thirty families compose the best society of a little 
country town, you may be sure that each of the thirty 
families in its secret soul looks down upon the other 
twenty-nine ; and fancies that it stands on a totally 
different level. And it is a kind arrangement of 
Providence, that a man's own children, horses, house, 
and other possessions, are so much more interesting to 
himself than are the children, horses, and houses of 
other men, that he can readily persuade himself that 
they are as much better in fact, as they are more 
interesting to his personal feeling. But it is provok- 
ing when a man is always obtruding on you how high- 
ly he estimates his own belongings, and how much 
better than yours he thinks them, even when this is 
done in all honesty and simplicity ; and it is infuriat- 
ing when a man keeps constantly telling you things 
which he knows are not true, as to the preciousness 
and excellence of the gifts with which fortune has en- 
dowed him. You feel angry when a man, who has 
lately bought a house, one in a square containing fifty, 



148 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

all as nearly as possible alike, tells you with an air of 
confidence that he has got the finest house in Scot- 
land, or in England, as the case may be. You are ir- 
ritated by the man who on all occasions tells you that 
he drives in his mail-phaeton " five hundred pounds' 
worth of horseflesh." You are w^ell aware that he did 
not pay a quarter of that sum for the animals in ques- 
tion ; and you assume as certain that the dealer did 
not give him that pair of horses for less than they 
were worth. It is somewhat irritating when a man, 
not remarkable in any way, begins to tell you that he 
can hardly go to any part of the world without being 
recognized by some one who remembers his striking 
aspect, or is familiar with his famous name. " It costs 
me three hundred a year, having that picture to look 
at," said Mr. Windbag, pointing to a picture hanging on 
a wall in his library. He goes on to explain that he 
refused six thousand pounds for that picture; which at 
five per cent, would yield the annual income named. 
You repeat Windbag's statement to an eminent artist. 
The artist knows the picture. He looks at you fix- 
edly ; and for all comment on Windbag's story, says 
(he is a Scotchman) Hoot toot. But the disposition 
to vapor is deep set in human nature. There are not 
very many men or women whom I would trust, to give 
an accurate account of their fomily, dwelling, influ- 
ence, and general position, to people a thousand miles 
from home, who were not likely ever to be able to 
verify the picture drawn. 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 149 

It is hardly nece^^sary to mention among disagree- 
able people, those individuals who take pleasure in 
telling you that you are looking ill ; that you are 
falling off, physically or mentally. " Surely you have 
lost some of your teeth since I saw you last," said a 
good man to a man of seventy-five years : " I cannot 
make out a word you say, you speak so indistinctly." 
And so obtuse, and so thoroughly devoid of gentle- 
manly feeling, was that good man, that when admon- 
ished that he ought not to speak in that fashion to a 
man in advanced years, he could not for his life see 
that he had done anything unkind or unmannerly. "I 
dare say you are wearied wi' preachin' to-day; you 
see you're gettin' frail noo," said a Scotch elder, in my 
hearing, to a worthy clergyman. Seldom has it cost 
me a greater effort than it did to refrain from turning 
to the elder, and saying with candoj-, " What a boor 
and what a fool you must be, to say that! " It was as 
well I did not ; the boor would not have known what 
I meant. He would not have known the provocation 
which led me to give him my true opinion of him. 
" How very bald you are getting," said a really good- 
natured man, to a friend he was meeting for the first 
time in several years. Such remarks are for the most 
part made by men who, in good faith, have not the 
least idea that they are making themselves disagree- 
able. There is no malicious intention. It is a matter 
of pure obtuseness, stupidity, selfishness, and vulgar- 
ity. But an obtuse, stupid, selfish, and vulgar person 



150 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

is disagreeable. And your right course will be, to 
carefully avoid all intercourse with such a person. 

But besides people who blunder into saying un- 
pleasant things, there are a few who do so of set in- 
tention. And such people ought to be cracked. They 
can do a great deal of harm ; inflict a great deal of 
suffering. I believe that human beings in general 
are more miserable than you think. They are very 
anxious ; very careworn ; stung by a host of worries ; 
a good deal disappointed, in many ways. And in the 
case of many people, worthy and able, there is a very 
low estimate of themselves and their abilities ; and a 
sad tendency to depressed spirits and gloomy views. 
And while a kind word said to such is a real benefit, 
and a great lightener of the heart ; an ingenious 
malignant may suggest to such, things which are as a 
stunning blow, and as an added load on the weary 
frame and mind. I have seen, with burninsr indis-na- 
tion, a malignant beast (I mean man) playing upon 
that tendency to a terrible apprehensiveness which is 
born with many men. I have seen the beast vaguely 
suggest evil to the nervous and apprehensive man. 
"This cannot end here ;" ''I shall take my own meas- 
ures now;" "A higher authority shall decide between 
us ; " I have heard tlie beast say ; and then go away. 
Of course I knew well that the beast could and would 
do nothing ; and I hastened to say so to tlie appre- 
hensive man. But I knew that the poor fellow would 
go away home ; and brood over the beast's ominous 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 151 

threats ; and imagine a hundred terrible contingencies; 
and work himself into a fever of anxiety and alarm. 
And it is because I know that the vague threatener 
counted on all that ; and wished it ; and enjoyed the 
thought of the slow torment he was causing; that I 
choose to call him a beast rather than a man. In- 
deed, there is an order of beings, worse than beasts, 
to which that being should rather be referred. You 
have said or done something, which has given offence 
to certain of your neighbors. Mr. Snarling comes and 
gives you a full and particular account of the indigna- 
tion they feel, and of their plans for vengeance. JNIr. 
Snarling is happy to see you look somewhat annoyed ; 
and he kindly says, " Oh, never mind ; this will blow 
over, as other things you have said and done have blown 
overy Thus he vaguely suggests that you have given 
great offence on many occasions, and made many bit- 
ter enemies. He adds, in a musing voice, " Yes; as 
MANY other things have blown over." Turn the in- 
dividual out ; and cut his acquaintance. It would be 
better to have a upas-tree in your neighborhood. Of 
all disagreeable men, a man with his tendencies is the 
most disagreeable. The bitterest and longest lasting 
east wind, acts less perniciously on body and soul, than 
does the society of Mr. Snarling. 

Suspicious people are disagreeable, also people who 
are always taking the pet. Indeed, suspiciousness and 
pettedness generally go together. There are many 
men and women who are always imagining that some 



152 CONCEKNIXG DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

insult is cle>ignecl by the most innocent words and do- 
ings of those around them ; and always suspecting that 
some evil intention against their peace is cherished 
by some one or other. It is most irritating to have 
anything to do with such impracticable and silly mor- 
tals. But it is a delightful thing to work along with 
a man who never takes offence : a frank, manly man, 
who gives credit to others for the same generosity of 
nature which he feels within himself; and who if he 
thinks he has reason to complain, speaks out his mind 
and has things cleared up at once. A disagreeable 
person is he who frequently sends letters to you with- 
out paying the postage ; leaving }'ou to pay twopence 
for each penny which he has thus saved. The loss of 
twopence is no great matter ; but there is something 
irritating in tlie feeling that your correspondent has 
deliberately resolved that he would save his penny at 
the cost of your twopence. There is a man, describ- 
ing himself as a clergyman of the Church of England, 
(I cannot think he is one,) who occasionally sends me 
an abusive anonymous letter, and who invariably sends 
his letters unpaid. I do not mind about the man's 
abuse, but I confess I grudge my twopence. I have 
observed, too, that the people who send letters unpaid 
do so luibitually. I have known the same individual 
send six successive letters unpaid. And it is probably 
within the experience of most of my readers, that out 
of (say) a hundred correspondents, ninet3-nine inva- 
riably pay their letters properly ; while time after time 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 153 

the hundredth sends his with the abominable big 2 
stamped upon it, and your servant walks in and 
worries you by the old statement that the postman is 
waiting. Let me advise every reader to do wdiat I 
intend doing for the future: to wit, to refuse to receive 
any unpaid letter. You may be quite sure that by so 
doing you will not lose any letter that is worth having. 
A class of people, very closely analogous to that of 
the people who do not pay their letters is that of such 
as are constantly borrowing small sums from their 
friends, which they never restore. If you should ever 
be thrown into the society of such, your right course 
will be to take care to have no money in your pocket. 
People are disagreeable, who are given to talking of 
the badness of their servants, the undutifulness of their 
children, the smokiness of their chimneys, and the de- 
ficiency of their digestive organs. And though with 
a true and close friend, it is a great relief, and a 
special tie, to have spoken out your heart about your 
burdens and sorrows, it is expedient, in conversation 
with ordinary acquaintances, to keep these to yourself. 
It must be admitted, with great regret, that people 
who make a considerable profession of religion have 
succeeded in making themselves more thoroughly dis- 
agreeable than almost any other human beings have 
ever made themselves. You will find people, who not 
merely claim to be pious and Christian people, but to be 
very much more pious and Christian than others, who 
are extremely uncharitable, unamiable, repulsive, stu- 



154 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

pid, and narrow-minded ; and intensely opinionated and 
self-satisfied. We know, from a very high authority, that 
a Christian ought to be an epistle in commendation of 
tlie blessed faith he holds. But it is beyond question, 
that many people who profess to be Christians, are like 
grim Gorgon's heads warning people off from having 
anything to do with Christianity. Why should a 
middle-aged clergyman walk about the streets with a 
sullen and malignant scowl always on his face, which 
at the best would be a very ugly one ? Why should 
another walk with his nose in the air, and his eyes 
rolled up till they seem likely to roll out? And why 
should a third be always dabbled over with a clammy 
perspiration, and prolong all his vowels to twice the 
usual length ? It is indeed a most woful thing, that peo- 
ple who evince a spirit in every respect the direct con- 
trary of that of our Blessed Redeemer, should fancy 
that they are Christians of singular attainments ; and it 
is more woful still, that many young people should be 
scared away into irreligion or unbelief by the wretch- 
ed delusion that these creatures, wickedly caricaturing 
Christianity, are fairly representing it. I have be- 
held more deliberate malice, more lying and cheating, 
more backbiting and slandering, denser stupidity, and 
greater self-sufficiency, among bad-hearted and wrong- 
headed religionists, than among any other order of hu- 
man beings. I have known more malignity and slan- 
der conveyed in the form of a prayer, than should have 
consigned any ordinary libeller to the pillory. I have 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 155 

known a person who made evening prayer a means of 
infuriating and stabbing the servants, under the pretext 
of confessing their sins. '• Tiiou knowest, Lord, how 
my servants have been occupied this day ; " with these 
words did the blasphemous mockery of prayer begin 
one Sunday evening in a house I could easily indicate. 
And then the man, under the pretext of addressing 
the Almighty, raked up all the misdoings of the ser- 
vants (they being present of course), in a fashion 
which, if he had ventured on it at any other time, 
would probably have led some of them to assault him. 
" I went to Edinburgh," said a Highland elder, " and 
was there a Sabbath. It was an awfu' sight ? There, 
on th« Sabbath-day, you would see people walking 
along the street, smiling as if they were perfect- 
ly happy!" There was the yravamen of the poor 
Highlander's charge. To think of people being or 
looking happy on the Lord's day ! And indeed to 
think of a Christian man ever venturing to be happy 
at all ! " Yes, this parish was highly favored in the 
days of Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown," said a spiteful 
and venomous old woman, — with a glance of deadly 
malice at a young lad who was present. That young 
lad was the son of the clergyman of the parish, — one 
of the most diligent and exemplary clergymen in 
Britain. Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown were the clergy- 
men who preceded him. And the spiteful old woman 
adopted this means of sticking a pin into the young 
lad, conveying the idea that there was a sad falling off 



156 CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

now. I saw and heard her, my reader. Now when 
an ordinary spiteful person says a mahcious thing, 
being quite aware that she is saying a malicious thing, 
and that lier motive is pure mahce, you are disgu^ted. 
But when a spiteful person says a malicious thing, all 
the while fancying herself a very pious person, and 
fancying that in gratifying her spite, she is acting from 
Christian principle, I say the sight is to me one of the 
most disgusting, perplexing, and miserable, that ever 
human eye beheld. I have no fear of the attacks of 
enemies on the blessed Faith in which I live, and hope 
to die. But it is dismal, to see how our holy religion 
is misrepresented before the world, by the vile impos- 
tors who pretend to be its friends. 

Among the disagreeable people wiio make a pro- 
fession of religion, probably many are purely hypo- 
crites. But we willingly believe that there are peo- 
ple, in whom Christianity appears in a wretchedly 
stunted and distorted form, who yet are right at the 
root. It does not follow that a man is a Christian, 
because he turns up his eyes and drawls out his words ; 
and when asked to say grace, offers a prayer of twenty 
minutes' duration. But again, it does not follow that 
he is not a Chi'istian, though he may do all these 
things. The bitter sectary, who distinctly says that 
a humble, pious man, just dead, has ''gone to hell," 
because he died in the bosom of the Church, — how- 
ever abhorrent that sectary may be in some respects, — 
may be, in the main, within the Good Shepherd's fold, 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 157 

wherein he fancies there are very few but himself. 
The dissenting teacher who declared from his pulpit 
that the parish clergyman (newly come, and an entire 
stranger to him) was ''a servant of Satan," may possi- 
bly have been a good man, after all. Grievous defects 
and errors may exist in a Christian character, which 
is a Christian character still. And the Christian, hor- 
ribly disagreeable and repulsive now, will some day, 
w^e trust, have all that purged away. But I do not 
hesitate to say, that any Christian, by so far as he is 
disagreeable and repulsive, deviates from the right 
thing. Oh, my reader, when my heart is sometimes 
sore through what I see of disagreeable traits in Chris- 
tian character, what a blessed relief there is in turning 
to the simple pages, and seeing for the thousandth 
time The True Christian Character, — so different! 
Yes, thank God, we know where to look, to find what 
every pious man should be humbly aiming to be ; and 
when we see That Face, and hear That Voice, there 
is something that soothes and cheers among the 
wretched imperfections (in one's self as in others), of 
the present : — something that warms the heart, and 
that brings a man to his knees ! 

The present writer has a relative, who is Professor 
of Theology in a certain famous University. With 
that theologian I recently had a conversation on the 
matter of which we have just been thinking. The 
Professor lamented bitterly the unchristian features 
of character which may be found in many people 



158 CONCERNIXG DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

making a great parade of their Christianity. He 
mentioned various facts, which had recently come to 
his own knowledge ; which w'ould sustain stronger 
expressions of opinion than any which I have given. 
But he went on to say, that it would be a sad thing 
if no fools could get to heaven ; nor any unamiable, 
narrow-minded, sour, and stupid people. Now, said 
he, with great force of reason, religion does not alter 
idiosyncrasy. When a fool becomes a Christian, he 
will be a foolish Christian. A narrow-minded man 
will be a narrow-minded Christian ; a stupid man, a 
stupid Christian. And though a malignant man will 
have his malignity much diminished, it by no means 
follows that it will be completely rooted out. " When 
I would do good, evil is present with me." " I find 
a law in my members, warring against the law of m}^ 
mind ; and enslaving me to the law of sin." But you 
are not to blame Christianity for the stupidity and 
unamiability of Christians. If they be disagreeable, 
it is not the measure of true religion they have got, 
that makes them so. In so far as they are disagree- 
able, they depart from the standard. You know, you 
may make water sw eet or sour ; you may make it red, 
blue, black ; and it will be water still, though its purity 
and pleasantness are much interfered with. In like 
manner, Christianity may coexist with a good deal of 
acid, — with a great many features of character very 
inconsistent with itself. The cup of fair water may 
have a bottle of ink emptied into it. or a little verjuice. 



CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE 159 

or even a little strychnine. And yet, though sadly 
deteriorated, though hopelessly disguised, the fair water 
is there ; and not entirely neutralized. 

And it is worth remarking, that you will find many 
persons who are very charitable to blackguards, but 
who have no charity for the weaknesses of really good 
people. They will hunt out the act of thoughtless 
liberality, done by the scapegrace who broke his 
mother's heart, and squandered his poor sisters' little 
portions ; they will make much of that liberal act, — 
such an act as tossing to some poor Magdalen a purse, 
filled wnth money which was probably not his own ; 
and they will insist that there is hope for the black- 
guard yet. But these persons will tightly shut their 
eyes against a great many substantially good deeds, 
done by a man who thinks Prelacy the abomination 
of desolation, or who thinks that stained glass and an 
organ are sinful. I grant you that there is a certain 
fairness in ti-ying the blackguard and the religionist by 
different standards. Where the pretension is higher, 
the test may justly be more severe. But I say it is 
unfair to puzzle out with diligence the one or two 
good things in the character of a reckless scamp, and 
to refuse moderate attention to the many good points 
about a weak, narrow-minded, and uncharitable good 
person. I ask for charity in the estimating of all 
human characters, — even in estimating the character 
of the man who would show no charity to another. I 
confess freely that in the la>t-named case, the exercise 
of charity is extremely difficult. 



CHAPTER VI. 



OUTSIDE. 




HERE is a tremendous difference between 
beinjj; Inside and beinfjj Outside. The 
distance in space may be very small ; but 
the distance in feeling is vast. Some- 
times the outside is the better place, sometimes the 
inside ; but I have always thought that this is a case 
in which there is an interruption of nature's general 
law of gradation. Other differences are shaded off 
into each other. Youth passes imperceptibly into 
age ; the evening light melts gradually into darkness ; 
and you may find some mineral production to mark 
every step in the progress from lava to granite, which 
(as you probably do not know) are in their elements 
the same thing. But it is a positive and striking fact, 
that you are outside or inside. There is no gradation 
nor siiading off between the two. 1 am sitting here 
on a green knoll ; the ground slopes away steeply on 
three sides, down to a little river. Tlie grass is very 
rich and fresh ; and it is lighted up with innumerable 
buttercups and daisies. You can see that the old 



OUTSIDE. 161 

monks, who used to worship in that lovely Gothic 
chapel, brought these acres under cultivation in days 
when what is now the fertile country round, was a 
desolate waste. And the warm air of one of the last 
days of May is just stirring the thick trees around. 
But all this is because I am outside. There is an in- 
side hard by where things are very different. Down 
below this green knoll, but on a rock high above the 
little river, yon may see the ruins of an old feudal 
castle. Last night I passed over the narrow bridge 
that leads to the rock on which the ruins stand; and a 
young fellow, moderately versed in its history, showed 
me all that remains of the castle. You go away 
down, stair after stair, and reach successive ranges 
of chambers, all of stone, formerly guard-rooms and 
kitchens. These chambers are sufficiently cheerful ; 
for though on one side far underground, on the other 
side they are high above the glen and the river. The 
setting sun was streaming into their windows ; and 
the fresh green of beeches and pines looked over from 
the other side of the narrow gorge. But now the 
young fellow mentioned that the dungeons M'ere still 
far beneath ; and in a pitch-dark passage, he made 
me feel a sii^all doorway, black as night, going down 
to the horrible dark- recesses below, to which not a 
ray of light was admitted, and to which not a breath 
of the fragrant spring air without could ever come. 
You could not but think what it must have been, long 
ago, to be dragged through those dark passages, and 
11 



162 OUTSIDE. 

violently thrust through that narrow door, and down 
to the black abyss. You felt how thoroughly hope- 
less escape would be, — how entirely you were at the 
mercy of the people who put you there. And coming 
up from those dungeons, climbing the successive stairs, 
you reached the daylight again ; and descending the 
steep walks of the garden, you reached a place just 
outside the dungeons ; which on this side are far 
above ground. There was the pleasant summer sun- 
set ; there were the milk-white hawthorns and the 
fragrant lilacs ; there was an apple-tree, whose pink 
and white blossoms were gently swayed by the warm 
wind against the outside of the dungeon- wall. And, 
almost hidden by green leaves, you could hear the 
stream below, whose waters (it is to be confessed) 
had suffered somewhat from the presence, a few miles 
above, of various paper-mills. And here, I thought, 
were the outside and the inside; only six feet of wall 
between ; but in all their aspect, and above all in tlie 
feeling of the crushed captive within, a thousand miles 
apart. Of course, there was no captive there now ; 
but all this scene was the same in the days when 
those dungeons were fully inhabited. And doubtless, 
many of those who were then thrust into those dismal 
places liked them just as little as you and I should ; 
and were missed and needed by some outside just as 
much as you or I could be. 

In this case, you observe, it is better to be outside 
than to be inside. But there are many cases in which 
it is otherwise. 



OUTSIDE. 163 

You may be outside physically ; as you would be 
if you were to fall, unnoticed, and in the night, over- 
board from a ship, — and it to pass on, and leave you 
to perish in the black waters. Many human beings 
have done that ; an old school-fellow of mine did. It 
must be a dreadful thing. It would be better, in such 
a case, not to be able to swim ; for then the suffering 
would be the sooner over ; and the mind would be in 
such a bewildered, hurried state, that there would be 
less room for the agony of thought. But in warmer 
seas, where the chill of the water would not speedily 
benumb into loss of power and consciousness, the 
single hour through which, as Cowper tells us, an 
unaided swimmer might sustain himself in life, would 
seem like a lifetime. I know a man who supported 
himself for a whole night, by the help of two oars, 
after his vessel had gone down in the Indian Ocean. 
His wife and child went with it ; and after desperate 
efforts to save them, he found himself in the water, 
clinging to his two oars. Three times, through that 
awful night, he cast the oars away from him, and 
dived deep under the surface, hoping that he might 
never come up ; but the instinctive clinging to life 
was too strong ; and each time he faintly struggled 
back to his oars again. 

Tlien you may be outside morally. You may 
somehow have turned out of the track in which those 
who started with you are going on in life. Perhaps 
through folly, perhaps through sin, you have got 



164 OUTSIDE. 

beyond the pale. There is a narrow passage in a 
certain city, a steep and narrow passage of evil odors, 
through which many clergymen are wont to go to a 
certain building, in which a great ecclesiastical coun- 
cil meets. In a dark recess, opening into that narrow 
passage, and leading to various wretched dwellings, I 
have beheld a deposed and degraded minister stand- 
ing in the darkest shadow he could find, and watching 
those who were once his brethren going up by the 
way he once used to go, — but shrinking back from 
their notice. Alas for the poor outsider, — so near 
physically to the place where he used to be, but 
morally so far away ! Surely his case is worse than 
that of the castaway, swept from the deck into the 
boiling ocean. After that sad instance, we shall feel 
the less sympathy for such moral outsiders as those 
who suffer through the existence of lines of social 
cleavage : the people who chafe at being excluded 
from the society of the great and exclusive First 
Circle of a little country town ; or who complain 
keenly that some wealthy or perhaps noble neighbor 
keeps them on the outside of his dwelling. Probably 
you have known people feel this moral exclusion very 
bitterly. You may have heard a lady in some small 
community complain with extreme severity that she 
was thus made an outsider; and that, in the festive 
tea-parties which went on in the halls of light around 
her she was permitted to have no part. At the same 
time she probably showed, with great force of state- 



OUTSIDE. 165 

ment and argument, that she was in all respects a 
great deal better than the people inside that chai-nied 
circle to whose outside she was condemned. You 
could but sympatliize with the individual in her sor- 
row, and advise her not to mind. Every one has 
known the wrath and jealousies which have arisen 
from thus putting people morally outside, — from not 
sending them cards on the occasion of a marriage, — 
from not inviting them to some entertainment. You 
may remember a classical instance of the wrathful 
spirit awakened in a human being stung by the sense 
of being outside. Mr. Samuel Warren describes a 
man as standing in Hyde Park on an afternoon in 
the fashionable season, seeing all that gay life going 
on, and ft-eling that he had nothing to do with it, 
and bestowing on the whole system of things his 
extremest malison. Perhaps a worthier nature might 
have looked on in kindly interest at a class of con- 
cerns and a mode of existence in which he had no 
share ; and hoped that all paths through this world, 
however far apart in time, might yet end and meet in 
the same happy place together. We may wish well, 
my reader, — and I trust we shall wish well, — even to 
those with whom we have little in common, — even to 
those beyond the circle of whose sympathies we stand, 
and beyond whose comprehension our great interests 
lie. 

Moral outsideness may coexist with physical in- 
sideness. This truth is well known to unpopular 



166 OUTSIDE. 

officers in regiments, uho tliough physically inside 
are morally outside ; also to schoolboys who for some 
offence have been temporarily sent to Coventry by 
their young companions. And probably such find it a 
heavy trial to be placed outside the pale of society, — 
to sit on a form at school with thirty other boys, none 
of whom will speak to them, — to be cut off from 
joining in the games of the play-ground. There used 
to be a vulgar expression current among Scotch 
schoolboys, — probably it is current still, — which was 
founded on this principle : that a human being though 
physically an insider may be morally an outsider. 
You spoke of being in with such a youthful com- 
panion, and out with such another. You ai'e aware 
how consignment to moral outsideness often serves 
as a fearful punishment of offences to which laws 
cannot reach. To be entirely repudiated and cast off 
by the society amid which you live, whether lofty or 
lowly, — to be made a social outlaw and outsider, — is 
something not easily borne even by the most callous ; 
— something which right-thinking men could support 
only by the firm conviction that solemn principle 
prompted the conduct which brought down this repro- 
bation. It is not nearly so lonely a thing to dwell 
in the wilderness, never seeing a human face, as it 
would be to live in the town in which you were born 
and brought up, and to see, as you walked its streets, 
scores of faces you know well, but each averted as 
you pass. You may have seen poor women bear 



OUTSIDE. 167 

this, with what crucifixion of the whole nature they 
only know ; you may have beheld them face the uncon- 
sciousness of tlieir presence on the pait of old friends 
with a disdainful smile, or meet it with the look that 
betokened a breaking heart. I have witnessed this, 
my reader, more than once,' and I doubt not you 
have done so too. As for men, they can stand all 
this better. They can always find a certain class who 
are content to associate with them : a class of people 
like themselves. And with a great injustice, not in- 
deed without some reasons in its favor, you know how 
even the most reputable society passes lightly in a 
man what it visits with its severest reprobation in a 
woman. Yes ; you may have witnessed a brazen 
outsider, who ought never to have been suffered in- 
side again, gradually elbowing himself, by force of 
face, into weight in the senate of a certain moral 
country. You may have known an unrepenting 
blackguard, once cast out by the society of the town 
and the county, and who never afforded the faintest 
reason why he should be let in, step by step getting 
in again ; till at length the aged reprobate was in high 
favor in families abounding in girls, and saw clergy- 
men of great pretensions seated at his hospitable 
board. Yet, in the main, a man becomes an outsider 
by deserving it. I mean an outsider with people with 
whom he would wish to be an insider. With otliers, 
it may be different. I have heard of a young mid- 
shipman who was made an outsider because he read 



168 OUTSIDE. 

his Bible morning and evening ; and because he would 
not get drunk when the rest did. A man would be 
made an outsider in certain parts of this empire, 
unless he helped to screen the sneaking, cowardly 
murderer who shoots his landlord from shelter of a 
tree, because asked to pay his rent. And there are 
parts of America in which you would become an 
outsider unless you spoke in praise of the biggest and 
blackest outrage on humanity that the sun looks down 
on — I mean negro slavery. Of course, among thieves 
you must say nothing against stealing, or they might 
turn you out. But in the main, in this country, 
people are put outside because it serves them rightly. 
And the punishment is a fearfully severe one, reach- 
ing to sins and to people not otherwise easily punished. 
You have known persons obliged, by this moral 
outlawry, to go away from the district or the country 
where all their interests lay ; even great wealth and 
rank have not sufficed to prevent a man's feeling 
bitterly that he was made an outsider. You may 
have seen the fair mansion and the noble trees which 
their owner could never enjoy, because he durst not 
show his face where he was known. There was once 
a man of no small position, who was master of a pack 
of fox-hounds, let us say in Ethiopia. On a certain 
Sunday, that man chose to amuse himself by taking- 
out his hounds, and chasing a fox which he had 
caught, — having cut off the poor fox's feet previously 
to turning it out to be chased. Of course the brute 



OUTSIDE. 1 69 

(T mean the master of hounds) was brought before 
the magistrates of that part of Ethiopia, and heavily- 
fined. The hiw could do no more ; and the punish- 
ment was most insufficient. The brute probably cared 
very little for that. But he probably cared a good 
deal when in a day or two he received a communi- 
cation from all the princes and nobles of that district, 
in which they told him that they withdrew from his 
hunt and cut his acquaintance. Prompt and resolute 
outsiding inflicted justice in the most satisfactory way. 
I have more to say of moral outsiders ; but at this 
point I cannot help looking round, and thinking what 
a blessing it sometimes is to be physically outside. 
Not far away, there lies the great city. Inside it the 
writer lives ; and he judges it the best of cities ; but 
now he is beyond it ; he is an outsider for three days 
of perfect rest in the quiet country. It is often worth 
wdiile to go in, that you may fully appreciate the 
blessing of coming out. Did you ever, reader, live 
in July, on that most beautiful Frith of Clyde? After 
a week in that pure air, and amid that scenery that 
combines so wonderfully richness and magnificence, 
you cease fully to understand what a privilege you are 
enjoying. But go up for a day to the hot, choky 
Glasgow of July ! Remain for five hours in that 
sweltering atmosphere, hurrying from place to place 
on business, and stunned by the ceaseless whirl of that 
hearty and energetic town ; and then go back to the 
seaside! Oh, how delightful to get away into the 



170 OUTSIDE. 

clear air and the quiet again ! And In this green 
place, 1 think of the city already spoken of; and of 
much work and worry there ; and feel that here for a 
little one is outside it all. I think of a certain Gothic 
huilding, in which is now sitting an ecclesiastic council 
which I much revere. I think of the hot atmosphere, 
of the buzz, of the excitement, of the speeches so 
very interesting and so very long. I observe from 
the newspaper that yesterday two gentlemen spoke 
four hours each. And then I look at that rich syc- 
amore, with foliage so thick, and at the hawthorn 
blossoms, and at the yellow broom, and at the green 
grass (for there is "much grass in this place"), and 
thank God for all ! 

Last night, on the little village green, I saw several 
moral outsiders, — I mean members of a class from 
which respectable folk would for the most part shrink 
away. There were four poor fellows, acrobats or tum- 
blers ; and a girl who is a rope-dancer. They had 
sent in advance a large bill, which was stuck on a 
tree, to say there was a grand entertainment coming. 
The entertainment hardly came up to its description. 
Still the men did many really wonderful gymnastic 
feats. They had a striking scene in which to display 
their ability. It was a beautiful twilight ; the little 
green had fine large trees round it ; in the distance 
there was a great purple hill, and close by was the 
gray old chapel. The only drawback was a very 
cold wind. There was a large assemblage of country 



OUTSIDE. 171 

folk, not very hearty or appreciative spectators ; and 
all evidently regarding themselves as on a totally dif- 
ferent level from the poor wanderers. The four men 
turned somersaults and the like ; the poor girl, in her 
sorry finery, stood by, wrapped in a large shawl till 
the time of her performance should come. I observed 
that when the hat went round, the rustic audience 
evinced great economy in their gifts. The Fool, poor 
fellow, his face bedaubed with coarse red and white, 
and wearing a cap with two ears, simulated great 
spirits, and made many jokes. I looked at him with 
great pity, and wondered if any human being ever 
deliberately chooses that way of earning his bread, or 
whether some men are gradually hedged up to it, with- 
out having had a chance of anything else. I was spe- 
cially sorry for the poor girl, standing with the cold 
wind blowing through her thin dress. The rustics 
roared with laughter, as the fool quoted Shakspeare. 
He was evidently a man of better education than the 
rest. His most effective point was when he took up a 
small looking-glass, which was to be given as a prize 
in some way I did not make out, and, looking into 
the glass, exclaimed, " Ah, that face ! that fine old 
face ! He was a man, take him for all in all," — and 
so forth. Not since I was a child have I seen such 
people ; and I was greatly touched by the sight of 
them, and by thinking what kind of life they must 
lead. I wondered if they ever went to church, or if 
any clergyman cared for them when they might be 



172 OUTSIDE. 

sick or dying. And if I had been able, I should as- 
suredly, in defiance of all the laws of Political Econ- 
omy, have seized them, and taken them away from 
their sorry occupation, and set them to respectable 
work, and made them go regularly to church ; and, in 
short, brought them inside. 

There is a curious feeling of tlie difference of being 
inside and outside, wlien you are sitting in the cabin 
of a ship at sea. It is so, even if you be making a 
voyage no longer than that from Glasgow to Liverpool. 
It is more so, if you be sailing on distant seas. Fancy 
a snug little sleeping-cabin^ and you lying there in a 
comfortable berth placed against the side of the ship. 
You lazily lay your head upon the end of the pillow 
next the ship's side ; about six inches distant from 
you, but outside, there is a huge shark rubbing its 
nose against the vessel. Your head and the horri- 
ble head of the strange monster are but a few inches 
apart ; happily you are inside and the monster out- 
side. Somehow it seems as if it were a more remark- 
able thing for a homely Scot, who went in his youth 
to a Scotch parish school and a Scotch parisli church, 
to be eaten by a shark in a f^ir-away place, than it 
would be for almost any other human being to meet a 
like end. The parish school and the Shorter Cate- 
chism are things wliolly inconsistent with a man's liv- 
ing any other than a decent life, or meeting any other 
than a quiet Christian close. You know how pleasant 
and refreshing it is, when you are walking along a 



OUTSIDE. 173 

dusty road in June, outside some beautiful park, to 
come to a spot whence you have a view into a green 
recess of the woods within. And probably you know 
a city where, as you Avalk the ghiring summer streets, 
you can look in many places through iron rails into 
depths of cool grass and verdant leaves that gladden 
eyes and heart together. And if you pay a yearly 
subsidy for a share in such a place, you know that 
when the iron gate swings noisily into its place behind 
you, and you pass from the pavement to the neat grav- 
elled walk or the. cool turf, though it be but for a quar- 
ter of an hour at the close of a busy afternoon, you 
have felt that there is far more than a physical differ- 
ence between the outside and the inside ; you have 
felt that breaths of balmy country air come back to 
you, and the remembrance of pleasant country cares. 
There are human beings, the possessors of fair do- 
mains, who seek by lofty walls to keep their fellow- 
creatures outside their belongings, — even to prevent 
their fellow-creatures from refreshing their weary eyes 
by looking upon green expanses which they are not 
likely to tread. It is a narrow and unworthy mind 
that feels it cannot fully enjoy its own possessions, 
unless all mankind be kept definitively outside them ! 
But it testifies to a truly noble nature, when we see 
what may be seen in many places now : the possessor 
of a beautiful stretch of landscape around his dwell- 
ing cordially welcoming his humbler neighbors to its 
paths and glades, — giving up the prettiest portion of 



174 OUTSIDE. 

bis park for a cricket-ground for the lads of the ad- 
joining vilhige, — and judging that his charming acres 
look all the more charming when they cease to be a 
charming solitude, and are lighted up by happy faces. 
But a sweet country place is usually in the midst of a 
sweet country ; and there is no place where you value 
green grass and green trees so much, as when you see 
them in contrast to the streets of a town, and espe- 
cially to the ugliest streets of a town. I know a spot 
which, on a summer day, is peculiarly stifling and 
dusty, — the dust being mainly the dust of coal. 
There is a suburban railway station ; there are va- 
rious mills ; there are houses of unattractive exterior ; 
everytliing is glaring in the sunshine ; everything is 
covered with dust. But you enter by a door in a 
lofty wall, and you feel the difference between being 
outside and inside. There is a curious, old-fashioned 
house, surrounded by a pretty garden, laid out with 
much taste. Everything is green, fresh, cool, quiet. 
It would be a pleasant spot anywhere ; but being 
where it is, it is a true feast to the eyes. You enjoy 
the inside so much more keenly, for the contrast with 
tlie outside. Green grass, green trees, clear water, 
abundant flowers and blossoms, freshness and fra- 
grance in the air. And outside, the coal-dust, the 
glaring pavements, the railway station ! 

I suppose most people like to contrast insides and 
outsides, that they may relish one or other the more. 
Did you ever, my reader, sit in your warm, cheerful 



OUTSIDE. 175 

library, on a cold winter night, away in the country, 
which in winter (it must be confessed) looks dread- 
fully bleak to people accustomed to the town ? Your 
curtains are drawn, and your lamp is lit ; and there 
are your familiar books all round, with their friendly- 
looking backs. There is the blazing fire, and not- 
withstanding the condemnation of a certain great 
Bishop, you do not think it wrong to possess various 
easy-chairs. All this is pleasant. There is an air of 
snugness and comfort, and you feel very thankful, it 
is to be hoped, to the Giver of all. But you do not 
know, from the survey of the mere interior, how 
pleasant it is. Go away out, and look at the cold 
wall outside your chamber. There it is, dark with 
the plashes of rain, which the howling blast bitterly 
beats against it. There are the leafless trees, shiver- 
ing in the blast. There is the stormy sky, with the 
racking clouds, w^hich the chilly moon is wading 
through. If you try to make out the landscape as 
a whole, there is nothing but a dense gloom, with a 
spectral shape here and there, which you know to be 
a gate or a tree. On a moonless night, the country is 
terribly dark. It is dark to a degree that townfolk, 
with their abundant street lamps, have no idea of. 
After beholding all these things outside, come in 
again, and you will understand in some measure 
how well off you are. You will know the distance 
there may be, between the two sides of a not very 
thick wall. 



176 OUTSIDE. 

Less than a wall may make the distance. You 
have probably travelled in a railway carriage through 
a dark stormy night. If you are a quiet, stay-at- 
home person, who do not travel so much that all rail- 
way travelling has come to be a mere weariness to 
you, you will enjoy such a night with considerable 
freshness of interest. And especially, you will feel 
the distance between being outside and being inside. 
Inside, the thick cushions ; the two great powerful 
lamps, which give abundant light ; the warm rugs and 
wraps ; the hot water stool for your feet ; the news- 
papers, and the new magazine ; one or two pleasant 
companions, who do not trouble "you by talking, ex- 
cept at the stations ; — the stations forty miles apart. 
There you lie in luxury, with the feeling that you 
may honestly do nothing, — that you may rest. And 
looking through the window, there is the bleak, dark 
landscape, with all kinds of strange shapes which you 
cannot make out: the glare cast upon cuttings through 
which you tear, the fearful hissing and snorting of 
a passing engine, the row of lighted windows of a 
passing train ; the lurid flame of distant furnaces, 
the lights of sleeping towns. Yes, a night's travel- 
ling between Edinburgh and London is as wonderful 
a thing as anything recorded in the "Arabian Nights " 
if it were not that it has grown so cheap and com- 
mon ! 

Looking out of the carriage-window over the tracts 
on either side, and thinking how little parts you from 



OUTSIDE. 177 

them, you may call to mind a certain ghastly jour- 
ney by a night-train. A deliberate and cruel mur- 
derer, who had committed (it was believed) more 
than one or two murders for gain, was very justly 
sentenced to be hanged. He was tried and sentenced 
in London ; and then he was conveyed in a railway 
carriage a journey of a hundred and forty miles to 
the place of execution. He sat, manacled, between 
two officers of justice, through these hours of travel- 
ling. It must have been an extraordinary journey ! 
It was a near glimpse of freedom for a man to have 
when the tightest meshes of the law had grasped him. 
There he was, inside, — a person going to a dreadful 
death ; and outside, stretching away and away, the free 
fields ; and only the two or three inches between that 
inside and that outside ! I can imagine how the poor 
wretch thought, Oh, if I could but get into the mid- 
dle of that thick wood ; if I could but hide under that 
ivied bridge ; if I could but put a hundred yards 
of midnight darkness between me and those terrible 
keepers who have me in their charge ! I can im- 
agine how, as he felt rapid mile after mile bringing 
him nearer the scaffold, he would wish for some terri- 
ble accident, some awful smash ; nothing could come 
amiss to him ; nothing could make him worse ! But 
in such a case, of course, the little partition between 
the inside and the outside, — the couple of inches of 
timber and cloth, the eighth of an inch of glass, — 
was the little indication of an awful gulf, that had 
12 



178 OUTSIDE. 

been making for months and perhaps years. Some- 
times, indeed, the grievous moral hipse that puts a 
man in the cage of which he can never get out, — or 
that puts him outside the pale through which he can 
never afterwards get in, — may be the doing of a very 
short time. The hasty blow, the terribly wrong turn- 
ing, may have marked a change as definite as that 
when the poor castaway is swept from the ship's deck 
into the waves of the Atlantic. 

In old days, when society was unsettled, it seems as 
if one w^ould have felt, more vividly than now, the 
difference between being inside and being outside, in 
the matter of safety. There must have been a pleas- 
ant feeling of security in looking over the battlements 
of a great castle, and thinking that you were safe in- 
side them. The sense of danger with which men 
must in those days have gone abroad, would be com- 
pensated by the special enjoyment of safety when 
they were fairly inside some place of strength. Hu- 
man nature is so made that even though you are 
aware that no one desires to attack or injure you, still 
there is a pleasure in thinking, that even if any one 
had such a desire, he could not. You know how chil- 
dren like to imagine some outer danger, that they 
may enjoy tlie sense of safety inside. It is witli real 
deliglit that your little boy, sitting on your knee, sud- 
denly hides his face in your breast, exclaiming loudly 
that there is a great bear coining to eat him. He 
feigns a danger outside, that he may enjoy the feel- 



OUTSIDE. 179 

ing of being safe from it. So you will find a man 
who lias been laboring hard, going away for a little 
rest to some remote quiet place. He tells you, no 
one can get at him there. The truth is, nobody wants 
to get at him ; but like the child with the great bear, 
he calls up some vague picture of a great number of 
people coming to worry him about a great many mat- 
ters, that he may have the pleasant feeling that he is 
safe from them where he is. You can think of a man 
who has committed some crime, flying from justice ; 
and as he puts mile after mile of desolate country 
between him and the place from which he has fled, 
thinking that surely he is safe in this retreat. You 
can think of the forger, a few years since, who fled 
across the Atlantic ; fled from the American seaboard 
and penetrated deeper and deeper into the backwoods, 
till he stopped in an utter solitude somewhere in the 
Far West. You can think how, as week after M^eek 
went on, he began to feel as if he might breathe in 
peace at last ; and think of the poor wretch, sitting 
one evening in his little log-house, when two London 
detectives walked in, having tracked him all this way ! 
Did you ever see a foolish duck dive at a hole made 
in the ice ; and come up again under the ice at a hope- 
less distance from the opening ? It is a sad thing to 
see even that poor creature perishing, with only an 
inch or two of transparent ice between it and the air. 
You hasten to break a hole near it to let it escape ; 
but by the time the hole is made, the duck is twenty 



180 OUTSIDE. 

yards off. Tlie duck I have seen ; but it must be a 
fearful case when a human being gets into the like 
position. You may have lately read how a man was 
at the bottom ot" i] deep well, when the earth near the 
tpp fell together and shut him in. There were ready 
hands to rescue him; and he was not so shut in but that 
his voice could be heard hurrying his deliverers. He 
told them that the water was rising ; that it was at 
his knees, at his breast, at his neck ; and the workers 
above were too late to save him. I suppose it is quite 
ascertained that in those wicked and cruel ages which 
ignorant people call the good old times, it was not unu- 
sual to wall up a nun in a niche of a massive wall, 
and leave her there to perish. Vade in pacem, were 
the words that sentenced to this doom ; which the 
reader probably knows, mean not Depart in peace, but 
Go to rest. Such was the kindly repose provided in 
those happy days. And another dismal inside is that 
of which Samuel Rogers tells us the true story ; the 
massive chest of oak in which a poor Italian girl hid 
herself, which closed with a spring-lock, and never 
chanced to be opened for fifty years. You can think 
of the terrible rush of confused misery in the poor 
creature's heart when she felt herself shut in, and 
heard the voices that seemed approaching her die 
away. But half a century after, when the chest was 
drawn out to the light and its lid was raised, there 
was no trace in the mouldering bones of the thrilling 
anguish which had been endured within that little 



OUTSIDE. 181 

space. It is a miserable story. Yet perhaps it has 
its moral analogies not less miserable. There are 
human beings who by some wrong or hasty step have 
committed themselves like the poor girl that perished, 
— who have, in a moral sense, been caught, and who 
can never get out. 

Yes ; it is a great question, Outside or Inside ; and 
now, my reader, you must let me remember, drawing 
these desultory thoughts to a close, that the testing 
question which puts all mankind to right and left, is 
just the question, in its most solemn significance, which 
may be set out in that familiar phrase. There is the 
Christian fold, — there is the outer world ; and we are 
either within the fold of the Good Shepherd of souls, 
or without it. It is not a question of degree, as it 
might be if it founded on our own moral character and 
deservings. It is the question, have we confided our- 
selves to the Saviour or not ; are we right or wrong ; 
are we within or without ? And the two great alter- 
natives, we know, are carried out, without shading off 
between, into the unseen world. We know that there, 
when some have gone in to the feast, the door is shut ; 
and others may stand without, and find no admission. 
Let us humbly pray, that He who came to seek and 
to save that which was lost may find each reader of 
this page, a lost sheep by nature, a poor wanderer in 
the outer wilderness, — and draw all with the cords of 
love within his fold. And let us humbly pray that at 



182 OUTSIDE. 

the last, we may all, however our earthly paths have 
varied, find entrance into that Golden City, which has 
a wall great and high, whose building is of jasper, and 
which shall exclude all sin and sorrow ; through whose 
gates, though not shut at jiW by day (and there shall 
be no night there), " there shall in no wise enter into 
it anything that defileth ; " and where the blessed 
inhabitants " shall go no more out," but be safe in 
their Father's house forever ! 



CHAPTER VII. 
GETTING ON. 



^T^^^i^VERYBODY is Going On. We are. all 
V L_iy|/^1 getting thi-ough our little span of day- 
^ l^r^I^ light. We are spending the time that is 
^ ■ H allotted to us, at the rate of three hun- 
dred and sixty-five days a year. We are all going on 
through life, somehow, — not very cheerfully, if one 
may judge l)y the careworn, anxious faces of most 
middle-aged people you pass on the street. But some 
people are not merely Going On ; they are also Get- 
ting On, — which is a very different tiling. All are 
growing older ; a man here and there is also growing 
bigger. I mean bigger in a moral sense. As you and 
I, my reader, look round on those early companions 
who started with us in the race of life, we can discern 
that great changes have passed upon many of them. 
Some who started as cart-horses, of a very shaggy and 
uncombed appearance, have gradually assumed the as- 
pect of thoroughbred, or at least of well-bred animals. 
Some who set out as horses sixteen hands high, have 
shrunk to the size of Shetland ponies. Certain who 



184 GETTING ON 

started as calves, have not attained maturity with 
advancing years ; and instead of turning into consol- 
idated oxen, they have only grown into enormous 
calves. But without going into such matters, I am 
sure you know that among your old companions there 
are those who are shooting ahead of the rest, or who 
have already shot ahead of them. There are those 
who are pointed at as Rising Men. They are de- 
cidedly Getting On. I do not mean that they are be- 
coming famous, or that they are becoming great men. 
They have not had much chance of that. Their lot has 
circumscribed their ambition. Their hearts do not beat 
high for praise; but have known various perplexities as 
to the more substantial question of the earning of bread 
and butter. But they are quietly and surely progress- 
ing. They have now advanced a good deal beyond what 
they were five or ten years since. Every profession 
has its rising men. The Church, the Law, Medicine, 
Commerce, Literature, have their men wlio are Get- 
ting On, — year by year Getting On. A great many 
men find their level rather early in life ; and remain 
for many years much the same in standing. They are 
not growing richer, as they grow older. They are 
not coming to be better known. They are not gain- 
ing a greater place and estimation in their walk of 
life. Many a little shop-keeper at fifty-five is in 
worldly wealth much as he was at thirty-five. He 
has managed to rub on, sometimes with a hard strug- 
gle ; it has been just enough to make the day provide 



GETTING ON. 185 

for the day's wants ; and there has been no accumula- 
tion of money. Many a domestic servant, after many 
years of toil, is not a whit better off than when she 
was a hopeful girl. If she lias been provident and 
self-denying, she may have a few pounds in the Sav- 
ings'-bank. Many a laboring man in the country has 
been able each week to make the hard-earned shillings 
provide food and clothing for his children and their 
mother; but he has laid up no store ; he has not ad- 
vanced ; he lives in the same little cottage ; and his 
poor sticks of furniture are all the worse for their 
wear ; and his carefully-kept Sunday suit is not so 
trim now as it used to be when he courted his hard- 
featured wife in her fresh girlhood, and was esteemed 
as a rustic beau. Many a faithful clergyman at sixty 
is a poorer man than he was at thirty ; or in any case 
not richer. It has cost many an anxious thought, 
through these years, to make the ends meet ; and that 
hard task will cost its anxious thoughts to the end. 
You who wish to have an efficient clergy, who will do 
their work heartily and well, agitate against that 
wicked and idiotic notion, that a clergyman is likely 
to do his work best, if he be crushed down by the 
pressure of poverty ; if his wife be worn into her 
grave by sorry schemings to make the little means go 
their farthest ; and if his poor little children have to 
run about without shoes and stockings. There are 
certain opinions which I should not think of meeting 
by argument ; but rather by the severest application 



186 GETTING ON. 

of the cat of ninetails. And one of these is the opin- 
ion of the old fool (he was a Scotch Judge) who said 
that "a puir church would be a pure church." 

But returning from this digression, let me repeat, 
that however hard it may be to explain how some men 
get on while others do not, there can be no question as 
to the fact that some men do get on while others do 
not. People get on in many ways ; as you will un- 
derstand, if you look back a few years, and compare 
what some of your friends were a few years since 
with what they are now. There is A, whom you re- 
member in his early days at college, an ungainly cub 
with a shock head of red hair and a tremendous 
Scotch accent. That man has taken on polish ; he 
has got on ; he has seen the world ; he is an accom- 
plished gentleman. There is B, ten years since a poor 
curate ; now risen to the charge of an important 
parish. There is C ; he has married a rich wife ;' he 
has a fine house ; he has several horses, various dogs, 
and many pigs ; he has made so great a rise in life, 
that you would say that sometimes when he comes 
down-stairs in the morning, he must think that he is 
the wrong man. There is D ; some years ago he 
tried in vain for a certain very small appointment ; 
the other day he was offered one of the most valuable 
in the same profession, and declined it. Thertj is E ; 
he tried to write for the magazines. His early articles 
were ignominiously rejected. The other day he got a 
thousand pounds for one edition of a few of the re- 



GETTING ON. 187 

jected articles. You know how, in running the race 
of life, some one individual shows his head a little in 
front, gradually increases his lead, and finally dis- 
tances all competition. Once upon a time, there was 
a staff of newspaper reporters attached to a certain 
London journal. One of them, not apparently clev- 
erer than the rest, drew bit by bit ahead, till he 
reached the wool-sack. And when he presided in the 
great assembly whose speeches he was wont to report, 
he must unquestionably have felt that he had Got On. 
Indeed, I have heard that homely phrase applied to 
him by an old Scotch lady who knew him in his 
youth ; and so who could never speak of his success 
in life save in modified terms. " Our minister," said 
the old lady to me, "' had two sons. One went to In- 
dia. As for John, he went to London ; and he got on 
very well." No doubt John had got on ; for he was 
at that time Chief Justice of England. If you look 
at " The Reliques of Father Prout," you will find a 
large picture, containing portraits of the contributors 
to a well-known London magazine, thirty years ago. 
There is a portrait of a comparatively unnoted man, 
with a glass stuck in his eye. He was an outsider 
then ; and had given little sign of what he was to be 
to-day. The portrait is of Mr. Thackeray. You may 
have heard the name before. This very day, I was 
told about a man who forty years since opened a lit- 
tle shop, stocked chiefly with coarse towels. So my 
informant averred. If so, the demand for coarse 



188 GETTING ON. 

towels in a certain great town must have been enor- 
mous, or the individual in question must have been 
most fortunate in drawing general attention to his 
coarse towels ; for he drew ahead of other dealers in 
towels, and became one of the greatest merchant- 
princes of England. But without taking extreme 
cases, you know that within more modest limits, there 
are people who are steadily Getting On. While one 
man lives for thirty years in the same house, and 
maintains the same general appearance ; his next 
neighbor ascends the scale of fashion ; gets time af- 
ter time a better house, till he attains a grand coun- 
try mansion ; and from the total absence of any save 
the conveyance common to mankind, attains to the 
phaeton, the brougham, and the ftimily chariot. One 
preacher does his duty steadily and respectably, year 
after year ; and no one thinks anything particular 
about him. Another tears like a rocket to the high- 
est elevation of the preacher's precarious popularity. 
His church-doors are mobbed ; his fame overspreads 
the land ; his portrait is in the shop-windows ; his 
sermons sell by scores of thousands. 

How is it that men Get On ? How is it that in 
every walk of life, there are those who draw ahead of 
their competitors ? It is a very simple and primary 
notion, not likely to be entertained unless by youthful 
and unsophisticated minds in remote rural districts, 
that the most deservins; men Get On the best. To 



GETTING ON. 189 

gain any advantage or eminence, indeed, which is not 
bestowed by high-handed patronage, a man must have 
a certain amount of merit. The horse that wins the 
Derby must unquestionably be able to gallop at a very 
great pace. Of course, if the Derby prize were given 
by patronage, it might occasionally fall to a horse with 
only three legs. And there are places in the Church 
and the Law which are filled up by unchecked patron- 
age ; and in which a perfectly analogous state of mat- 
ters rnay be discerned. It would be insulting some 
men to suggest that they were placed where they 
are because they were the best men eligible ; or 
even because they were fit to be placed there at 
all. You may have known instances in which a man 
was put in a certain place, because he was the worst 
man, or one of the worst men, that could be found. 
But even in cases where the eminence is not arbitra- 
rily given, — where it i§ understood to be earned by the 
man himself, and not allotted to him by some otlier 
man, — it is a simple and unsophisticated notion, that 
the best man gets tiie best place. The winner of the 
Derby must be able to gallop very fast ; but nine 
times out of ten, he is by no means the best horse that 
starts. A bad place at starting ; an unlucky push 
from a rival in mid career ; the awkward straining of 
a muscle ; a little nervousness or want of judgment in 
the jockey wdio rides him ; and the best horse is 
beaten by a very inferior one, more lucky or better 
handled. I am obliged to say, as the result of all my 



190 GETTING ON. 

observation of the way in which human beings Get 
On, that human beings get on mainly by Chance, or 
Luck. I use the words in their ordinary meaning. 
I mean that human beings Get On or fail to Get On, 
in a fashion that looks fortuitous. There must be 
merit, in walks where men have to make their own 
way ; but that a man may get on, he must be seconded 
by Good Luck, or at least not crossed by 111 Luck. 
We must speak of things, you know, as they appear 
to our ignorance. I know there is a Higher Hand ; 
and I humbly recognize that. I know that " Promo- 
tion Cometh neither from the East, nor from the West, 
nor from the South ; but God is the Judge ; he put- 
teth down one, and setteth up another." We all feel 
that. I believe that these words of the Psalmist give 
us the entire philosophy of Getting On. It is a mat- 
ter of God's sovereignty ; and God's sovereignty, as it 
affects human beings, we speak of as their Good or 
111 Luck. Of course, there is no chance in the mat- 
ter ; everything is tightly arranged and governed ; 
and doubtless, if we could see aright, we should see 
that there are wise and good reasons for all ; but as 
we do not know the reasons, and as we cannot foresee 
the arrangement, we fall back on a word which ex- 
presses our ignorance ; and which states the fact of 
the apparent arbitrariness of the government of Provi- 
dence. Nothing can be more certain than the fact, 
that there are men who are lucky ; and other men 
who are unlucky. The unlucky, perhaps, need it all ; 



GETTING ON. 191 

and the lucky can stand it all ; but there is the fact. 
And we know that there are blessed compensations, 
not known to onlookers, which may make the thorn in 
the flesh or the crook in the lot a true blessing ; which 
cause men thankfully to say that it was good for them 
that they w^ere afflicted and disappointed ; good for 
them that they did not Get On. The wise man Jabez, 
you remember, knew that God might " bless indeed," 
while to other eyes He did not seem to bless at all. 
And so his prayer was, not that he might absolutely 
Get On ; but that he might Get On or fail to do so as 
God saw best. " Oh, that thou wouldst bless me 
indeed!" And so, speaking in ordinary language, 
let me say that I hold by the Psalmist. It is God's 
sovereignty. Fiat Voluntas Tua 1 The thing that 
makes men Get On in this world, is mainly their 
luck ; and in a very subordinate degree, their merit 
or desert. 

Life is a lottery. No doubt there is no real chance 
in life ; but then there is no real chance in any lottery. 
I do not hesitate to say that what we deserve has very 
little to do with our Getting On. And all human schem- 
ing and labor have very little to do with the actual re- 
sult in Getting On. And for this reason, I find a great 
defect in all that I have seen written as to the arts of 
self-advancement, whether these arts be honest and 
commendable, or otherwise. It is easy to point out a 
number of honorable means which tend to help a man 
on, and a number of contemptible tricks and dodges 



192 GETTING ON. 

which tend towards worldly wealth and influence. But 
the practical use of all these directions is nulhfied by 
the fact, that some fortuitous accident may come across 
all the hard work and self-denial of the worthy man, 
or all the dirty trickery of the diplomatic cheat ; and 
make all perfectly futile. Honest industry and perse- 
verance, also resolute sellishness, meanness, toadyism, 
and roguery, tend to various forms of worldly success. 
But you can draw no assurance from these general 
principles, as to what either may do for yourself. Out 
of a hundred men, the Insurance tables will tell you 
very nearly how many will live for five or ten years to 
come ; but not the slightest assurance can be conveyed 
by these tables to any individual man of the hundred 
as to his expectations of life. I have a practical lesson 
to draw from all this, by and by; but here let it be re- 
peated, that as a general rule, it is not the most deserv- 
ing who Get On, but tlie most lucky. My reader, if 
you have met success in life yourself, you know this 
well. The man who has succeeded knows this far 
better than the man who has failed. The writer states 
his principle the more confidently, because he knows 
he has himself got on infinitely better than he de- 
serves. He looks back on the ruck with which he 
started, and he sees that he has drawn ahead of some 
who deserved at least as well ; who deserved far bet- 
ter. The writer says earnestly that it is not the most 
deserving who get on the best ; not because he thinks 
he has got less than he deserves, but because he knows 



GETTING ON. 193 

he has got an immense deal more. For these things 
he knows Whom to thank ; and he desires to be thank- 
ful. 

Chance, then (which means God's Providence), 
advances people in many ways. A man publishes a 
book. It meets great success. There is no particular 
reason. Other books as good, and some books a great 
deal better, prove entire failures. A man goes to the 
bar, and shortly a stream of briefs begins to set in tow- 
ards his chambers. Men of equal ability, and eager 
to excel in their profession, wait wearily on year after 
year. A man goes into the Church ; he is put in con- 
spicuous places, where his light is not hid under a 
bushel ; he gets large preferments, no one can exactly 
say why. He fills respectably the place where he is 
put ; but doubtless there are many who would fill it 
iust as well. You will find a man chance upon a gen- 
eral reputation for great learning, of which he never 
gave the slightest proof. Somehow it became the fash- 
ion to speak of him as the possessor of unexplored 
mines of information. Then you know how a man 
then and there becomes a privileged person, you can- 
not say how. A privileged person means a man who 
is permitted to say and do the silliest and most inso- 
lent things, and to evince the most babyish pettedness 
of temper, — things for which anybody else would be 
kicked, or esteemed as an idiot ; but when the privi- 
leged man does all this, every one sets himself to 
smooth the creature down if he be petted, and to ap- 
13 



194 GETTING ON. 

plaud his silly jokes if he be jocular. I do not know 
any more signal instance of the arbitrary allotment of 
things in this world, than this. It has been truly said 
that one man may steal a horse, while another must 
not look over the gate. To a certain extent, it is a 
matter of natural constitution. You remember how 
the dog was accustomed, without rebuke, to jump upon 
his master's knee ; while the donkey was chastised se- 
verely on endeavoring to do the same thing. You will 
find a man who is always being stroked down and flat- 
tered by the members of some public body, to which 
he never rendered any particular service. One can 
understand why the great Duke of Wellington, even 
when he had grown an extreme obstruction to army 
business and reform, should be deferred to by the 
nation for which he had done so much ; but you may 
have known people treated with the like deference, 
who had never done anything through life but dili- 
gently aim at securing the greatest advantage of the 
greatest number ; which (it is well known) is Number 
One. Then there are men who Get On, even to places 
of very great dignity, because somehow they have got 
into the track, and are pushed on with very little mo- 
tive force of their own. It would be invidious to 
mention striking instances of this : but it would be 
very easy. Other men Get On, by being appointed, 
with little competition, to some position which at the 
time is not worth much, but which grows important 
and valuable. And a worthier way of Getting On, is 



GETTING ON. 195 

when a man, bj liis doings and character, makes a 
position important, which in other hands would not 
be so. 

The Chance (as ah-eady explained) which rules 
events in this life, never appears more decidedly than 
in making the diligent efforts of some men successful, 
and of other men futile. We can see the arts which 
men use, thinking to advance themselves ; and no doubt 
these arts often tend directly to that end ; but then 
Chance comes in to say whether these arts shall sig- 
nally fail or splendidly succeed. I have known a la- 
borious student get up many pages of Greek for an 
examination ; all his pages most thoroughly, save two 
or three which were hastily read over. And upon the 
examination-day, sure enough he was taken upon the 
pages he did not know well, while his competitor was 
taken on his pet page, which he knew by heart. And 
there were scores of pages which that competitor had 
never looked at, but he trusted his Luck, and it did not 
fail him. 

It may be assumed as certain, that all men would 
like to Get On. If you see a number of cabs upon a 
stand, you may be quite sure that any one of them 
would take a fare if it could get it. And a man, in 
all ordinary cases, by entering any profession, becomes 
as a cab upon the stand waiting for a fare. If he 
stand idle in the market-place all day, it may be taken 
for granted that it is because no man has hired him. 



196 GETTING ON. 

And though we may have quite outgrown our early 
ambitions ; though we may never have had much am- 
bition ; though we may be quite contented with our 
present position and circumstances ; still, we should 
all like to Get On. We do not talk of ambition, in 
the case of commonplace folk like ourselves ; and 
though the " love of fame " has been called the " uni- 
versal passion," I believe that it is practically confined 
to a very little fraction of mankind. We call it am- 
bition when Mr. Disraeli goes in for leader of the 
House of Commons ; or when Napoleon twists his 
way to a throne. We do not call it ambition when a 
clergyman would like a larger congregation to preach 
to, or another hundred or two a year of income. We 
do not speak of ambition in such cases ; it is only that 
people would like to Get On a little. We like to 
think that we are Getting On ; that we live in a bet- 
ter house than we used to do ; that our little library 
is gradually growing ; that our worldly means are im- 
proving ; that we are a little wiser and better than 
we used to be. But though we may take for granted, 
that all men would like to Get On, we may be assured 
that there are many who would not take much trouble 
to do so. Their wishes are moderate ; they have 
learned to be content. They will not fret themselves 
into a fever ; they will not push. And much less will 
they sneak, or cheat, or wriggle. If success comes, 
they are pleased ; but they are not vexed though it 
do not come. They look with interest, and with some 



GETTING ON. 197 

amusement, at the diplomatic schemes of their friends, 
who enter themselves in the race of ambition. They 
see that pertinacious pushing will make a man Get 
On, unless he be very unlucky or very incapable. 
But they do not think it worth while pertinaciously 
to push. They see that judicious puffing, on your 
own part and that of your friends, is a helpful thing ; 
but they shrink from puffing themselves, or from 
hearing their friends puff them. Puffing is a great 
power ; as Mr. Barnum and others know. It is a 
great thing, to have friends to back you and pufF you. 
One man publishes a book. He does not know a soul 
who ever printed a line. There is not a human being 
to say a good word of his book for friendship's sake. 
Another author has a host of literary friends ; and 
when his book comes out, they raise a sough of ap- 
plause through the press. And all this is very natu- 
ral ; and is not unfair. Only the unlucky man who 
has got no friends will probably grumble. Yet all 
this will not always succeed. I have known two 
books come out together. One was written by a man 
who had no writing friends ; the other 6y a man who 
had many. The former was reviewed widely and 
favorably ; the other w^as very little noticed by the 
reviewers. But you cannot always force things upon 
the reading public. The unreviewed book sold splen- 
didly ; the other hardly sold at all. The unreviewed 
book enriched its author ; the other slightly impover- 
ished its author. All this, of course, was Luck again. 



198 GETTING ON. 

I have already stated what appears to me the great 
defect in all treatises on the arts of self-advancement 
and self-help. There appears to me a fallacy at the 
foundation of all their instructions. They all say, in 
one form or other, " Do so and so, and you will Get 
On." Some of these treatises recommend fair and 
worthy means ; as industry, self-denial, perseverance, 
honesty, and the like. Others of them recommend 
unworthy means ; as selfishness, unscrui)ulousness, im- 
pudence, toadyism, sneakiness, and the like. But they 
fail to allow for Chance or Providence. They fail to 
bring out the utter uncertainty which attends all arts 
for Getting On. No mortal can say how a man is to 
Get On. A poor Scotch lad, walking the London 
streets, fell into a cellar and broke his leg. TJiat 
made his fortune. Tiie wealthy owner of the cellar 
took him up, and pushed him on ; and he rose to be 
Lord Mayor of London and an eminent member of 
Parliament. A certain man (and a good man too) 
became a Bishop through accidentally attracting the 
notice of a disreputable peeress who was in high favor 
with a disreputable monarch, who once reigned (let 
us say) in the centre of Africa. The likeliest arts, 
whether honest or dishonest, may fail utterly. And 
the lesson, I think, is this : Do your duty quietly and 
honestly; Don't push, don't puff; Don't set your 
heart upon any worldly end ; it is not worth while ; 
if success comes, well ; if it does not come, you do 
not mind much. " Seekest thou great things for thy- 



GETTING ON. 199 

self? seek them not!" There never were words 
written more worthy of being remembered and acted 
on by all men. There is no use in being ambitious. 
Being ambitious just means setting your whole heart on 
Getting On ; and in this world people seldom get the 
thing on which they set their heart. And no matter 
how you may labor to attain your end, you cannot make 
sure of attaining it. You may probably see it carried 
away by some easy-going man who cared very little for 
it, and took very little trouble to get it. Read Mr. 
Smiles' excellent book on " Self-Help." It will do 
you good to read it. It will spur you to do your best, 
to see what other men have done. But remember, 
you are in God's hands. The issue is with Him. It 
no more follows tliat if you work like George Ste- 
phenson or Lord Eldon, you will get on as they did ; 
than that if you eat the same thing for breakfast as 
the man who gets the great prize in a lottery, you 
will get the prize like him. Still, Mr. Smiles will do 
you good. Unless luck sets very greatly against you, 
you may, by honestly doing your best. Get On fairly. 
Your chance of Getting On to the highest point of 
success is just about the same as your chance of being 
smashed altogether. It is not great. And remember, 
my friend, that it is not worldly success that is the 
best thing we can get in this world. There is some- 
thing far better. And perhaps it may be by forbid- 
ding that you should Get On, that God may discipline 
you into that. I should feel very great interest in 



200 GETl'ING ON. 

reading the lives of a number of men who honestly 
did their best, and failed ; yet who were not soured 
by failure ; men who, like St. Paul, bore the painful 
weight through life, and bore it kindly and humbly ; 
getting great good and blessing out of it all. Let us 
always keep it in our remembrance, that there is 
something far better than any amount of worldly suc- 
cess, which may come of worldly failure. 

Still, remembering all this, it is interesting to look 
at the various arts and devices by which men have 
Got On. Judicious puffing is a great thing. But it 
must be very judicious. Some people irritate one by 
their constant stories as to their own great doings. I 
have known people who liad really done considerable 
things ; yet who did not get the credit they deserved, 
just because they were given to vaporing of what 
they had done. It is much better to have friends 
and relatives to puff you ; to record what a sijlendid 
fellow you are, and what wonderful events have be- 
fallen you. Even here, if you become known as one 
of a set who puff each other, your laudations will do 
harm instead of good. It is a grand thing to have 
relations and friends who have the power to actually 
confer material success. Who would not wish to be 
DowB, that so he might be "taken care of?" You 
have known men at the Bar, to whom some powerful 
relative gave a tremendous lift at starting in their 
profession. Of course this would in some cases only 
make their failure more apparent, unless they were 



GETTING ON. 201 

really equal to the work to which they were set. 
There is a cry against Nepotism. It will not be 
shared in by the Nepotes. It must be a ftne thing to be 
one of them. Unhappily, they must always be a veiy 
small minority ; and thus the cry against them will be 
the voice of a great majority. I cannot but observe 
that the names of men who hold canonries at cath- 
edi'als, and other valuable preferments in the Church, 
are frequently the same as the name of the Bishop of 
the diocese. I do not complain of that. It is the 
plain intention of Providence that the children should 
suffer for their fathers' sins, and gain by their fathers* 
rise. It is utterly impossible to start, all human beings 
for the race of life, on equal terms. It is utterly 
impossible to bring all men up to a rope stretched 
across the course, and make all start fair. If a man be 
a drunken blackguard, or a heartless fool, his children 
must suffer for it ; must start at a disadvantage. No 
human power can prevent that. And on the other 
hand, if a man be industrious and able, and rise to 
great eminence, his children gain by all this. Robert 
Stephenson had a splendid start, because old George 
his fiither got on so nobly. Lord Stanley entered 
political life at an immense advantage, because he was 
Lord Derby's son. And if any reader of this page 
had some valuable office to give away, and had a son, 
brother, or nephew, who deserved it as well as any- 
body else, and who he could easily think deserved it 
a great deal better than anybody else, I have little 



202 GETTING ON. 

doubt that the reader would give that valuable office 
to the son, brother, or nephew. I have known, in- 
deed, magnanimous men who acted otherwij.e, who in 
exercising abundant patronage suffered no nepotism ; 
it was a positive disadvantage to be related to these 
men ; they would not give their relatives ordinary 
justice. The fact of your being connected with them 
made it tolerably sure that you would never get 
anything they had to give. All honor to such men ! 
Yet they surpass average humanity .-o far, that I do 
not severely blame those wlio act on lower motives. 
I do not find much fault with a certain Bishop who 
taught me theology in my youth, because L see that 
he has made his son a canon in his cathedral. I 
notice, without indignation, that the individual who 
holds the easy and lucrative office of Associate in 
certain Courts of Law, bears the same name with the 
Chief Justice. You have heard how Lord Ellen- 
borough was once out riding on horseback, when word 
was brought him of the death of a man who held a 
sinecure office with a revenue of some thousands a 
year. Lord Ellenborough had the right of appoint- 
ment to that office. He instantly resolved to ap- 
point his son. But the thought struck him, that he 
might die before reaching home, — he might fall from 
his horse, or the like. And so the eminent Judge 
took from his pocket a piece of paper and a pencil, 
and then and there wrote upon his saddle a formal 
appointment of his son to that wealthy place. And a^ 



GETTING ON. 203 

it was a place which notoriously was to be given, not 
to a man who should deserve it, but merely to a 
man who might be lucky enough to get it, I do not 
know that Lord Ellenborough deserved to be greatly 
blamed. In any case, his son, as he quarterly pock- 
eted the large payment for doing nothing, would 
doubtless hold the blame of mankind as of very little 
account. 

But whether you Get On by having friends who 
cry you up, or by having friends who can materially 
advance you, of course it is your luck to have such 
friends. We all know that it is *' the accident of an 
accident " that makes a man succeed to a peerage or 
an estate. And though trumpeting be a great fact 
and power, still your luck comes in to say whether the 
trumpet shall in your case be successful. One man, 
by judicious puffing, gets a great name ; another, 
equally deserving, and apparently in exactly the same 
circumstances, fails to get it. No doubt the dog who 
gets an ill name, even if he deserves the ill name, 
deserves it no more than various other sad dogs who 
pass scot free. Over all events, all means and ends in 
this world, there rules God's inscrutable sovereignty. 
And to our view, that direction appears quite ar- 
bitrary. " One shall be taken, and the other left." 
"Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated.*' " Hath 
not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump 
to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto 
dishonor?" A sarcastic London periodical lately 



204 GETTING ON. 

declared that the way to attain eminence in a certain 
walk of life, was to "combine mediocrity of talent with 
family affliction." And it is possible that instances 
might be indicated in which that combination led to 
very considerable position. But there are many more 
cases in which the two things coexisted in a very high 
degree, without leading to any advancement whatso- 
ever. It is all luck again. 

A way in which small men sometimes Get On, is 
by finding ways to be helpful to bigger men. Those 
bigger men have occasional^ opportunities of helping 
those who have been helpful to them. If you your- 
self, or some near relation of yours, yield effectual 
support to a candidate at a keenly-contested county 
election, you may possibly be repaid by influence in 
your favor brought to bear upon the Government of 
the day. From a bishopric down to a beadleship, I 
have known such means serve valuable ends. It is a 
great thing to have any link, however humble, and 
however remote, that connects you with a Secretary 
of State, or any member of the Administration. Pol- 
itical tergiversation is a great thing. Judicious rat- 
ting, at a critical period, will generally secure some 
one considerable reward. In a conservative institu- 
tion to stand almost alone in professing very liberal 
opinions ; or in a liberal institution to stand almost 
alone in professing conservative opinions ; will prob- 
ably cause you to Get On. The leaders of parties are 
likely to reward those who among the faithless are 



GETTING ON. 205 

faithful to them ; and who hold by them under diffi- 
culties. Still, luck conies in here. While some will 
attain great rewards by professing opinions very in- 
consistent with their position, others oy doing the same 
things merely bring themselves into universal ridicule 
and contempt. It is a powerful thing, to have abun- 
dant impudence ; to be quite ready to ask for whatever 
you want. Worthier men wait till their merits are 
found out ; you don't. You may possibly get what 
you ask ; and then you may snap your fingers in the 
face of the worthier man. By a skilful dodge, A got 
something which ought to have come to B. Still, A 
can drive in dignity past B, covering him with mud 
from his chariot- wheels. There was a man in the last 
century who was made a bishop by George III., for 
having published a poem on the death of George II. 
That poem declared that George II. was removed by 
Providence to heaven, because he was too good for this 
w orld. You know what kind of man George II. was ; 
you know whether even Bishop Porteus could possibly 
have thought he was speaking the truth in publishing 
that most despicable piece of toadyism. Yet Bishop 
Porteus was really a good man, and died in the odor 
of sanctity. He was merely a little yielding. Hon- 
esty would have stood in the way of his Getting On ; 
and so honesty had to make way for the time. Many 
people know that a certain Bishop was to have been 
made Archbishop of Canterbury ; but that he threw 
away his chance by an act of injudicious honesty. On 



206 GETTING ON. 

one occasion, he opposed the Court, under very strong 
conscientious convictions of duty. If he had just sat 
still, and refrained from bearing testimony to what he 
held for truth, he would have Got On much farther 
than he ever did. I am very sure the good man 
never regretted that he had acted honestly ! 

Judicious obscurity is often a reason for advancing 
a man. You know nothing to his prejudice. Emi- 
nent men have always some enemies ; there are those 
who will secretly hate them just because they are 
eminent ; and no one can say how or when the most 
insignificant enemy may have an opportunity to put a 
spoke in the wheel, and upset the coach in which an 
eminent man is advancing to what would have 
crowned his life. While nothing can be more certain 
than that if you know nothing at all about a man, you 
know no harm of him. There are many people who 
will oppose a man seeking for any end, just because 
they know him. They don't care about a total stran- 
ger gaining the thing desired ; but they cannot bear 
that any one they know should reach it. They can- 
not make up their mind to that. You remember a 
curious fact brought out by Cardinal Wiseman in his 
" Lives of the Last Four Popes." There are certain 
European kings who have the right to veto a Pope. 
Though the choice of the conclave fall on him, these 
kings can step in and say, No. They are called to 
give no reason. They merely say, Whoever is to be 
Pope, it shall not be that man. And the Cardinal 



GETTING OX. 207 

shows us, that as surely as any man seems likely to 
be elected Pope who has ever been Papal Ambassa- 
dor at the court of any of those kings, so surely does 
the king at whose court he was veto Iiim ! In short, 
the king is a man ; and he cannot bear that any one 
he knows should be raised to the mystical dignity of 
the Papacy. But the monarch has no objection to 
the election of a man whom he knows nothing about. 
And as the more eminent cardinals are sure to have 
become known, more or less intimately, to all the 
kings who have the right to veto, the man elected 
Pope is generally a very obscure and insignificant 
Cardinal. Then there is a pleasant feeling of superi- 
ority and patronage in advancing a small man, a man 
.smaller than yourself. You may have known men 
who were a good deal consulted as to the filling up of 
vacant offices in their own profession, who made it 
their rule strongly to recommend men whose talent 
was that of decent mediocrity, and never to mention 
men of really shining ability. And if you suggest to 
them the names of two or three persons of very high 
qualifications, as suitable to fill the vacant place, you 
will find the most vigorous methods instantly em- 
ployed to make sure that whoever may be success- 
ful, it shall not be one of these. " Oh, he would 
never do ! " 

It is worth remembering, as further proof, how little 
you can count on any means certainly conducing to 
the end of Getting On, that the most opposite courses 



208 GETTING ON. 

of conduct have led men to great success. To be the 
toady of a great man is a familiar art of self-advance- 
ment. There once was a person who by doing ex- 
tremely dirty work for a notorious peer, attained a 
considerable place in the government of this country. 
But it is a question of luck, after all. Sometimes it 
has been the making of a man, to insult a Duke, or to 
bully a Chief Justice. It made him a popular favorite ; 
it enlisted general sympathy on his side ; it gained him 
credit for nerve and courage. But public feeling, and 
the feeling of the dispensers of patronage in all walks 
of life, oscillates so much, that at different times, the 
most contradictory qualities may commend a man for 
preferment. You may have known a man who was 
much favored by those in power, though he was an 
extremely outspoken, injudicious, and almost reckless 
person. It is only at rare intervals that such a man 
finds favor ; a grave, steady, and reliable man, who 
will never say or do anything outrageous, is for the 
most part preferred. And now and then you may find 
a highly cultivated congregation, wearied by having had 
for its minister for many years a remarkably correct 
and judicious though tiresome preacher, making choice 
for his successor of a brilliant and startling orator, 
very deficient in taste and sense. A man's luck, in all 
these cases, will appear, if it bring him into notice just 
at the time when his special characteristics are held 
in most estimation. If for some specific purpose, you 
desire to have a horse which has only three legs, it is 



GETTING ON. 209 

plain that if two horses present themselves for your 
choice, one with three legs and the other with four, 
you will select and prefer the animal with three. It 
will be the best, so far as it concerns you. And its 
good luck will appear in this : that it has come to your 
notice just when your liking happened to be a some- 
what peculiar one. In like manner, you may find 
people say, In filling up this place at the present time, 
we don't want a clever man, or a well-informed man, 
or an accomplished and presentable man ; we want a 
meek man, a humble man, a man who will take snub- 
bing freely, a rough man, a man like ourselves. And 
I have known many cases, in which, of several com- 
petitors, one was selected ju-t for the possession ot 
qualities which testified his inferiority to the others. 
But then, in this case, that which was absolutely the 
worst, was the best for the particular case. The people 
wanted a horse with three legs, and when such an ani- 
mal presented itself they very naturally preferred him 
to the other horses which had four legs. The horses 
with four legs naturally complained of the choice, and 
thought themselves badly used when the screw was 
taken in preference. They wei-e wrong. There are 
places for which a rough man is better than a smooth 
one ; a dirty man than a clean one ; in the judgment 
(that is) of the people who have the filling up of the 
place. I certainly think their judgment is wrong. But 
it is their judgment, and of course they act upon it. 
As regards the attainment of very great and unusual 
14 



210 GETTING ON. 

wealth, by business or the like, it is very plain how 
much there is of luck. A certain degree of business 
talent is of course necessary, in the man who rises in a 
few years from nothing to enormous wealtli ; but it is 
Providence that says who shall draw the great prize ; 
for other men with just as much ability and industry 
entirely fail. Talent and industry in business may 
make sure, unless in very extraordinary circumstances, 
of decent success ; but Providence fixes who shall make 
four hundred thousand a year. The race is not to the 
swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor riches to men of 
understanding ; that is, their riches are not necessarily 
in proportion to their understanding Trickery and 
cheating, not crossed by ill-luck, may gain great wealth. 
I shall not name several instances which will occur to 
every one. But I suppose, my friend, that you and 
I would cut off our right hand before we should Get 
On in worldly wealth by such means as these. You 
must make up your mind, however, that you will not 
be envious when you see the fine house, and the horses 
and carriages of some successful trickster. All this 
indeed might have been had ; but you would not have 
it {it the price. That worldly success is a great deal 
too dear, which is to be gained only by sullying your 
integrity ! And I gladly believe that I know many 
men, whom no material bribe would tempt to what is 
mean or dishonest. 

There is something curious in the feeling which 
many people cherish towards an acquaintance who be- 



GETTING ON. 211 

comes a successful man. Getting On gives some people 
mortal offence. To them, success is an unpardonable 
crime. They absolutely hate the man that Gets On. 
Timoii, you remember, lost the affection of tho.-e who 
knew him, when he was ruined ; but depend upon it, 
there are those who would have hated Timon much 
worse had he suddenly met some great piece of good 
fortune. I have already said that these envious and 
malicious people can better bear the success of a man 
whom they do not know. They cannot stand it, when 
an old school-companion shoots ahead. They cannot 
stand it, when a man in their own profession attains to 
eminence. They diligently thwart such an one's plans, 
and then chuckle over their failure, saying, with looks 
of deadly malice, " Ah, this will do him a great deal 
of good ! " 

But now, my reader, I am about to stop. Let me 
briefly sum up my philosophy of Getting On. It is 
this : A wise man in this world will not set his heart 
on Getting On, and will not push very much to Get 
On. He will do his best, and humbly take with 
thankfulness what the Hand above sends him. It is 
not worth while to push. The whole machinery that 
tends to earthly success, is so capricious and uncertain 
in its action, that no man can count upon it, and no 
wise man will. A chance word, a look, the turning of 
a straw, may make your success or mar it. A man 
meets you on the street and says, Who is the person 



212 GETTING ON. 

for such a place, great or small ? You suddenly think 
of somebody, and say He is your man, and the thing 
is settled. A hundred poor fellows are disap{)ointed. 
You did not know about them, or their names did not 
occur to you. You put your hand into a hat, and drew 
out a name. You stuck a hook into your memory, and 
this name came out. And that has made the man's 
fortune. And the upshot of the whole matter is, that 
such an infinitude of little fortuitous circumstances 
may either further or prevent our Getting On ; the 
whole game is so complicated, that the right and happy 
course is humbly to do your duty and leave the issue 
with God. Let me say it again : " Seekest thou great 
things for thyself? Seek them not! " It is not worth 
while. All your seeking will not make you sure of 
getting them ; the only things you will make sure of 
will be fever and toil and suspense. We shall not 
push, or scheme, or dodge, for worldly success. We 
shall succeed exactly as well, and we shall save our- 
selves much that is wearisome and degrading. Let us 
trust in God, my friend, and do right; and we shall 
Get On as much as He thinks good for us. And it is 
not the greatest thing to Get On. I mean, to Get On 
in matters that begin and end upon this world. There 
is a progress in which we are sure of success, if we 
earnestly aim at it ; which is the best Getting On of 
all. Let us " grow in grace." Let us tiy by God's 
aid to grow better, kinder, humbler, more patient, more 
earnest to do good to all. If the germ of the better 



GETTING ON. 213 

life be implanted in us by the Blessed Spirit, and 
tended by Him day by day ; if we trust our Saviour 
and love our God, then our whole existence, here and 
hereafter, will be a glorious progress from good to 
better. We shall always be Getting On! 




CHAPTER VIII. 
AT THE LAND'S END. 




'UST a quarter of an hour ago, an aged 
man, the most intelligent and pleasant of 
hostlers, zealous in Methodism, and skilled 
^<^ in the characteristics of horses, said to 
the present writer, " Stand on that rock." And as he 
said the words, he pointed to a little flat expanse of 
granite, three or four feet square. The present writer 
obeyed. And then the aged and intelligent man added, 
emphatically and solemnly, " Now, sir, you are stand- 
ing on The Land's Hend." 

When I used continually to read the life of that 
great and good man, Dr. Arnold, (to whom, and to 
whose biographer, many thousands of human beings 
owe some of the most heahhful influence that ever 
went to ameliorate their heart and life,^ I remember 
thinking, a good many times, that one subject in a list 
of subjects for English verses to be prescribed to the 
boys of the sixth class, was a most suggestive one. It 
was, as the intelligent reader has anticipated, The 
Land's End. 



AT THE LAND'S END. 215 

One had a vague idea, that a great many fine things 
were to be said upon that subject. But if I ever 
thought what they were, I am sorry to say that they 
have quite vanished from remembrance now. At pres- 
ent, I can only look and feel, in a very confused 
fashion. For this is the Land's End. Here I am, on 
the extreme verge of England ; this paper is laid on a 
rough granite rock, in a little recess which keeps off 
the wind. All this little headland is granite, shattered 
and splintered as if by lightning. The granite is in 
many places covered with lichens ; and here and there 
a bright sprig of heather looks out from a little nook 
in which it has been able to root itself. The sea is 
roaring eighty feet below. Eighty feet make all the 
elevation ; of course the mere height is very poor 
when compared with that of many bits of the Scotch 
coast. The descent to the sea is perpendicular ; the 
sea below is not deep just at this point. Out, a mile 
and a half from shore, you might see the Longships 
Rocks ; detached islets rising in a line, very sharply 
out of the sea, and running up almost into spires. On 
one of them is a light-house. Three men live in it. A 
few years ago, a young man who had been absent from 
his family for twelve years, came back to visit his old 
home hard by* His father was one of the keepers of 
the light-house, and as it was his turn to take charge of 
the lights that month, he could not come ashore to see 
his son till a few days should pass. The morning after 
the son's arrival, it was too stormy to go out to the 



216 AT THE LAND'S END. 

light-house to visit his father, and he came to this spot 
to have as near a view as might be of the place where 
his father was. He fell over the rocks and was killed. 
It is a touching story ; if you cannot see why, I need 
not attempt to show you. 

Off on the right, at three miles' distance, is a black- 
looking promontory, called Cape Cornwall. When you 
visit the place, my reader, the old man will tell you it 
is the only cape in England. There are heads ; there 
are points ; there is a ness ; but there is no other cape. 
You would think that Cape Cornwall reaches into the 
sea farther than the Land's End itself ; but your eye 
deceives you. It falls short of its more famous neigh- 
bor by several hundred yards. Looking down from 
this recess, you may see a number of rocks, greater 
and less, rising out of the sea ; each with a ring of 
white foam at its base. Far out, you may just trace 
the outline of Scilly ; for the day is not very clear. 

When you come to this spot, my friend, you will 
have all the sights shown you by that most intelligent 
old man already mentioned ; that is, of course, if he 
and you are spared to meet. You will see, very near 
the p]nd, the deep marks of a horse's hoofs in the turf, 
within two feet of the verge. A stupid and blustering 
idiot once made a bet that he would ride on horseback 
to the Land's End ; meaning to the very extremity of 
the little rocky headland. He forced his horse down 
the steep and rugged descent from the heathery plateau 



AT THE LAND'S END. 217 

above, and upon the neck of turf-covered rock tliat 
joins the headland to the shore. But when the horse 
reached this shppery neck, he testified how much more 
sense he had than the blustering idiot who rode him, 
by refusing to go any farther. The blustering idiot 
goaded him with whip and spur ; and slipping upon 
the short turf, the poor creature fell ; and clung by 
his fore feet in the marks you see, before making the 
awful plunge below. The fall was not into water, but 
upon sharp rocks ; and the poor horse miserably per- 
ished. I lamented the horse's fate ; and I could not 
but conclude that had his master been smashed instead 
of himself, the nobler creature of the two would have 
been saved ; and the loss to mankind would have been 
inappreciably small. It is fifty-five years since the 
horse's hoofs clung to that last hope ; but the deep 
marks have been diligently kept clear, and they remain 
as when the horse was wickedly killed; serving as a 
monument of his sad fate, and of what a brainless fool 
his master was. After standing on the rocky table 
which is emphatically styled the Hend, you will clam- 
ber down a rough path, and lie down at all your length 
on a very overhanging crag. Here your head will 
project much over the sea ; and the intelligent old man 
will keep a tight hold of your feet. And now, look- 
ing away to the right, you will discern the reason why 
you were brought to this precarious position. You 
will see that the rocky neck joining the End to the 
shore, is penetrated clear through by a lofty Gothic 



218 AT THE LAND'S END. 

arch, t]iroii<:]:li which the waves fret in foam. You 
will be told of anolher lesser arch, which you cannot 
see. Tliese have been worn in the lapse of agt-s ; and 
some day, if the world stands, the supeiincumbent rock 
will fall, and the Land's End will become a Lttle lorky 
islet. You can see many traces in tlie rocks near, 
of the like having haj)pened before. Doubtless the 
Cornwall coast once reached at least as far seaward as 
those Longships Rocks. And coming up from this 
spot, you will reach the neck once more ; and here tlie 
old man (skilful hostler and zealous Methodist), if he 
thinks you a fit person so to distinguish ; if he sees 
you are a man or a woman who can svmjiathize with 
him and understand him ; will ])oint with reverence 
to a square block of granite that looks through the 
turf; and tell you that a good man whose memory he 
holds \^Yy dear, and whose memory can be indifierent 
to no human being who reverences simple-hearted 
devotion to the best good of his fellow-creatures, has 
been before you here. " John Wesley stood on that 
stone, and made verses of poetry," said the old man to 
me ; and I am glad to say that he then went on, with 
much simple solemnity, to repeat the verses from end 
to end. I doubt not you know them. They are the 
verses in which the good man tells us how, standing 
physically " between two seas ; " standing on this nar- 
row neck with the Atlantic chafing on either hand 
beneath ; he remembered that he, and every human 
iBKiing with him, stands morally and spiritually between 



AT THE LAND'S END. 219 

two oceans more solemn thnn thnt ; and prayed hum- 
bly that the pilgrimage might end well lor ;d!. The 
writer is a churchman ; churehinan both by head and 
by heart ; but when he heard again the sinii)le lines 
(which he confesses struck him as extremely poor 
Avhen tried by merely sesthetic rules), he could not 
but stand reverentially on the stone where We.-ley's 
feet had stood ; and tliink of the old man, with his 
white hair, his kindly face, his warm heart, and his 
beautifully-starched bands; and heartil}^ a>k, in a 
fjishion Vidvy familiar to us all, for more of Wejley's 
single-minded spirit. 

And now I have sent the old man awaj', thanking 
him very much for the intelligent and interesting way 
in which he told his story; and I wait here by myself. 
I have written these lines which you have read, since 
he departed. At a spot like this, a party of visitors 
along with you is fatal to your feeling the genius of 
tiie {)lace ; and after the most intelligent guide has 
told you all he can tell, it is a relief to get rid of him. 
I want to feel that I am here. And fin-«t, I am aware 
that I am not disappointed. I went many miles round 
to-day to see the Logan Rock. The Logan Rock is 
an imposition. It is a delusion and a snare. You 
are told it is a mass of granite weighing eighty tons ; 
and that it is so balanced by nature on a pivot of 
stone, that a touch from the hand can make it rock 
back and forward. To rock back and forward is 
apparently an idea conveyed in Cornish speech by 



220 AT THE LAND'S END. 

the verb to log ; and the Rock, tliouirh its name be 
spelled as above, is called the Loggin Rock, to describe 
its nature. You drive or walk ten miles from Pen- 
zance, by fearfully steep roa<ls the last miles, till you 
come to a very dirty little village at the top of a hill. 
I have seldom seen more squalid cottages. I wish I 
knew the name of the proprietor of the estate on 
which they are built. A man, who has been lounging 
about on tiie road to the village, approaches as you 
stop at the door of the neat little inn ; and the driver 
of the vehicle which has borne you fiom Penzance 
intioduces him as your guide. You follow him along 
a well-defined path, through fields of ripening grain, 
for about half a mile. Then you come upon a rocky 
height, from which you discern the sea below you on 
two sides, wiihin two hundred yards. You can indis- 
tinctly trace the outline of the walls of an ancient for- 
tress upon that rocky height. Then you sci'amble 
down U[)on a little isthmus, as at the Land's End ; the 
isthmus sj)reads into a little headland, made of huge 
blocks of granite. On either hand below you can see 
a beach of silvery white sand. As you are scrambling 
down the d(iscent to the isthmus, you observe a man 
leisurely walking up the opposite ascent ; and you 
become aware of the extent to which the divi>ion of 
labor is carried in that little Cornish village. One 
man is ^our guide to the Rock ; his business is to con- 
duct you along a path you could not possibly miss, 
even without a guide. A second man waits your arri- 



AT THE LAND'S END. 221 

val at the Rock ; liis bu-iness is to give it a pu>h Avith 
his shouhhn*, and set it loggln. The Rock is a hirge 
ma-is, whicli may ])Ossibly wei.iih eighty tons ; it cer- 
tainly does not look as if it did. Il: lies on the land- 
ward slope of the headhnid which yon reach by the 
isthmus. And when the man puts his shoulder to it, 
and gives it a push, you may, if you shut one eye, and 
look very sliarply with the other, see the rock move a 
distarice of perhaps one inch ; possibly two. Let me 
strongly advise the reader to spare himself the trouble 
of going to see that sight. 

But sitting on a rock at the Land's End, you will 
not feel disappointed. The interest here is not the 
factitious one of seeing a large stone moved an inch 
or two. It is the interest of looking at a wild i)iece 
of rocky coast, round whose name there clusters a 
crowd of associations. How familiar the name is ; 
how often, when a child, you pointed this place out 
on the map ; how many times you have wondered 
what it would be like ; and wondered if you woidd 
ever see it ! A quarter of a mile out to sea, just be- 
low, there is a black -looking rock ; on that rock at this 
minute there are sitting twelve cormorants. Now and 
then one of them skims off over the sea. The day 
has become overcast ; there is not a soul near. You 
cannot help having an eei'ie kind of feeling. You 
think it wonderful to find yourself here. 

Sitting here, I think of a passage in the works of 
the most pleasing of English essayists, whom the 



222 AT THE LAND'S END. 

writer is ?o happy as to call his friend. You will 
find the passage in "Friends in Council." In it, men- 
tion is made of an old lady, who firmly believed that 
three pounds given by her were equal to about five 
pound ten given by anybody else. Her money had 
cost so much thought and so much rigid saving to get 
it together. Sixpence by sixpence had been got to- 
gether through patient self-denial ; each separate shil- 
ling had formed the matter of long con.-ideration. 
And the old lady felt it hard that the result of all 
this should be hardly and unsympathetically expressed 
by such words as three pounds. Of course the philo- 
sophic reader knows that it was merely that the poor 
old lady felt an interest in what was her own, which 
she could not feel in what belonged to anybody else. 
Had she been a person of greater enlightenment, she 
would have read in all her own little anxieties and 
schemings, the reflection of what was passing in the 
minds of those around her ; and she would have con- 
cluded not that three pounds of her own were equal 
to six pounds of a neighbor's ; bnt rather that three 
pounds, no matter to whom belonging, made a serious 
and important thing. But the poor old lady's feeling 
was natural. I am not able, at the present moment, 
quite to repress a feeling entirely like it. It seems to 
me a far stranger thing that I should be here, than it 
would be that any one of a great many people I know 
should be here. They are venturesome Iblk. They go 
about a great deal. Nothing strikes them as very re- 



AT THE LAND'S END. 223 

markable. When Mr. Smith said in my hearing, that 
something or other happened when he was going into 
Jerusalem, I could not but look at Mr. Smith with 
great respect. But Mr. Jones, who has been every- 
where himself, was quite free from any such feeling. 
You would hear or read quite coolly, my friend, that 
A or B had been at the Land's P^nd. It is no great 
matter. But come yourself to this very spot where I 
am sitting ; look round on this scene on which I have 
cast my eyes since I wrote the last sentence ; and if 
you be a homely person who have never been beyond 
the limits of Britain, and who lead a quiet life from 
day to day somewhere in a quiet rural parish in Scot- 
land, you will feel it curious to find yourself here. 
And if you be a sensible person, you will not think it 
a fine thing to pretend that you do not feel it so. 

You remember what Sydney Smith said of Scot- 
land. He said, no doubt, many things on that sub- 
ject ; but the thing to which I refer is the state- 
ment that Scotland is " the knuckle-end of England." 
There is a certain degree of truth in the statement. 
After you have spent a little while in Surrey, or Sus- 
sex, or Wiltshire, in a very richly wooded part of 
either county; if you get into an express train on the 
North-Western Railway on the morning of a summer 
day, and travel on by daylight through Staffordshire 
and Lancashire, through Cumberland and Lanark- 
shire, till you arrive at Glasgow, you will be aware 
that Sydney Smith's metaphor corresponds with your 



224 AT THE LAND'S END. 

own feeling. You will be aware that as you travel 
towards the North, the trees are gradually growing 
smaller, the fields less rich, the wholt^ ]ands('ai)e iian r 
and bleaker; you will remember that nighiingales do 
not t^ing north of Leeds, and you will think of otiier 
little traces of something lilce a |)hy>ieal decadence. 
But the impression made upon you will vai'y accord- 
ing to the line of country you pass through. I could 
take you to tracts in Scotland where the trees and 
hedges and fields are as rich, and the air as soft and 
pleasant, as anywhere in Britain ; and where you add 
to the charms of the sweet English landscape, the 
long summer twilights which England wants. The 
true knuckle-end of P2ngland is here. And you will 
feel that, if you come to this place through the rich 
plains traversed by the Great Western Railway ; or 
(better still) by that railway wliich comes by Salis- 
buiy, Sherborne, and Honiton to P^xeter, through a 
country where at every turn you ieel you are look- 
ing on a landscape which is your very ideal of beau- 
tiful Elngland ; and where chui'ches and churchyards 
abound, so incomparably lovely in architecture and 
situation, that on a pleasant summer day one could 
hardly wish for better than to sit down on an ancient 
tombstone, and look for an hour at the fair })iece of 
gray Gothic, at the green ivy, and the great elms. 
And the churches come so frequently, that one cannot 
but think of the happy life of duty and leisure wiiich 
may well be led by the unambitious country parson 



AT THE LAND'S END. 225 

there. His population is probably so small that he is 
free from that constant sense of pressure under which 
the clergy in many places are now compelled to live. 
He may write his sermon without being worried by 
the thought of a dozen things waiting to be attended 
to ; and he may sit down under a large tree in the 
churchyard and meditate, without knowing that medi- 
tation is a luxury in which he has not time to indulge. 
But come on towards the West, and you will find the 
gradual approach to the knuckle-end. The juiciness 
and richness of the leg of mutton, pass slowly into 
tendon, skin, and bone. In Devonshire, you have 
Scotch irregularity of outline in the landscape ; but 
there is English luxuriance in the hedges and wild- 
flowers ; and more than English softness in the air. 
You enter Cornwall, over Brunei's wonderful but re- 
markably ugly suspension bridge at Saltash ; and you 
very soon feel that you have reached a tract entirely 
different from the ideal English country. The land 
is remarkably diversified in surface ; steep ups and 
downs everywhere ; and now and then, as you fly 
along in the railway train, you pass over a deep nar- 
row gorge, spanned by the flimsiest wooden bridge 
that ever formed part of a line of railway. Some- 
times these gorges are of vast depth. They occur 
perpetually ; and they are always crossed by the like 
unsubstantial structures. For many miles after en- 
tering Cornwall, the country is very richly wooded. 
You may see all kinds of forest trees growing luxu- 

15 



226 AT THE LAND'S END. 

riantly ; and many orchards, thickly crowded with 
apple-trees. But after you have passed Truro, there 
is a tolal change. The engine pants and struggles, as 
it hardly draws the train up inclines of extraordinary 
steepness ; and you begin to see all round you heather 
and granite ; great bare stretches of country with tin 
mines here and there, and rare woods of stunted pine. 
The railway brings you to Penzance, a pretty little 
town ten miles from the Land's End, which has the ad- 
vantage of a climate of wonderful mildness. Granite 
is the stone here ; almost every building is formed of 
it. The town is situated at one side of a considerable 
bay. Across the bay, three miles off, is St. Michael's 
Mount, rising out of the sea. St. Micliael's Mount, 
it will be remembered, was in former days the resi- 
dence of the Giant Cormoran, whose destruction 
formed the first recorded exploit of Jack the Giant- 
Killer. You leave Penzance and journey westward; 
probably in a phaeton drawn by a black horse. There 
is a rich country for the first two or three miles ; then 
you enter a district very bleak and desolate. The 
cottages are rude and squalid ; the churches, all of 
granite, are rare and large ; and look as if they were 
accustomed to be battered by heavy storms. You 
pass through the last village, which is about a mile 
fi'om the sea ; and then you go along a lane, through 
a great field whose surface is made of granite, heather, 
and yellow furze as short as heather. You see the 
sea before you, stretching far away ; but the ground 



AT THE LAND'S END. 227 

over which you are goinf^ swells so much, that it hides 
the rocky shore. Passing through that final large 
field, you might expect to come upon a sandy beach 
at last. At length you stand before a little cottage, 
an inscription on which tells you that it claims to be 
The Land's End Hotel : and here you will find 
the intelligent ostler, who guides you down a rough 
slope, not very steep, of granite, furze, and heather, 
till, after two hundred yards, you come upon the blunt 
promontory, whose extremity is by preeminence the 
End. The End does not reach into the sea so much 
as a hundred yards beyond the regular coast line. 
And tile End is not the boldest portion of that rocky 
coast. Its height, as has been said, is about eighty 
feet perpendicular ; while the rocks on either hand 
must be in many places at least a hundred and fifty. 
And now, looking back on the way you have come, 
you feel how gradually the scene around you grew 
barer, as you came on. It was like a bad man grow- 
ing old. Trees and hedges were left behind ; corn- 
fields and cottages with little gardens ; for tlie beau- 
tiful churches of Somersetshire, you have only that 
rude and stern erection which you passed a little 
since ; and now you have come to this, that you have 
no more than granite, and furze, and desolate sea. It 
is a most interesting spot to come to visit for a little 
while ; but it would be a terrible thing to be con- 
demned to live here for the remainder of your life. 
I cannot but think here of the unloved and unhonored 



228 AT THE LAND'S END. 

later clays of some hoary reprobate ; wlio, in a moral 
sense, lias had his Somersetshire, then his Cornwall, 
and last his Land's End. And even though a man 
be not a reprobate, I believe that all life, apart from 
the presence of religion, is a going down hill. It is 
leaving behind, from year to year, the trees and flow- 
ers ; leaving the soft green fields and the rich hedge- 
rows ; till you come at length to wastes of furze and 
heather ; and end at last in stern rocks and pathless 
sea. 

It was of this that the writer thought longest, sitting 
at the lonely Land's End ; and this was something, 
let me confess, that never once occurred to me when 
reading Arnold's life, and musing on his theme for 
English verses. Another thing which will probably 
occur to the reader, when he shall visit the same 
place, will be, what a solitary and small being he 
himself will be there. The writer's home, at this 
moment, is seven hundred and forty miles away. 
Probably it is a good deal less, if you could go in a 
direct line ; but such is the tale of the miles which 
he has traversed to reach the spot. And you will 
know, my friend, how misty and how far away your 
daily life and your home will seem, when you sit 
down by yourself in any lonely place, with all your 
belongings hundreds of miles distant. Going away 
alone, you truly leave great part of yourself behind. 
Your mere individuality is a very small thing in size. 
Great men, such as kings and nobles, have occasion- 



AT THE LAND'S END. 229 

ally had this truth disagreeably impressed upon them. 
A man with a ma";nificent estate must feel as thouiih 
those green glades and magnificent trees were a por- 
tion of himself, and as if you must see all these things, 
and add them to himself, before you can understand 
how big an object he really is. But small men feel 
that too. Tliey feel as though, to reckon what they 
are, you must add to the little object that sense reveals 
to you, the path they have come through life ; the 
labor they have come through ; the griefs and joys 
they have felt ; the atmosphere and the surroundings 
amid which they live at home. I thought of this, one 
afternoon last winter. The ground was covered with 
snow ; it had grown almost dark ; going down a steep 
street, in which were a good many passers-by, I be- 
held the dim form of a poor fellow who had but one 
arm. There he was, a little figure, walking along as 
last as he could, going home. You would have said, 
a more thoroughly insignificant atom of humanity 
could hai-dly be. But I knew all about that man's 
humble home ; and I knew how much depended on 
him there. Not many weeks before, his poor care- 
worn wife had died ; and at that minute he was going 
home to his children, four little things, the eldest but 
seven years old, to whom he now had to be all. Any- 
thing befalling that insignificant man, would be to 
those four children an infinitely more important event 
than the separation of the Northern and Southern 
States of America. If we knew more about our 



230 AT THE LAND'S END. 

humblest fellow-creatures, my reader ; if we knew 
what they iiave borne and done, and what they have 
yet to bear and do ; if round the unnoted little person- 
ality there were even the dim suggestion of its cares 
and belongings ; we should feel more sympathy for 
every man ; — we should regard no mortal as insignif- 
icant. I sometimes lind people who talk of the great 
majority of their fellow-creatures as cads ; people 
who, in another country, would doubtless stand up 
vigorously for slavery. Let me say, that when I call 
to mind what I have known of those whom some 
heartless fools would call so; — when I think of their 
sufferings, their cares, their patience, their resignation, 
their sacrifices for one another; — my feeling towards 
the fools to whom I have alluded, passes from con- 
tempt, and turns to indignation. Would that we had 
all some of the truly Christian spirit of the heathen 
poet, who told us how much of sympathy with every- 
thing human he felt as incumbent upon him, foras- 
much as he himself was a man ! 

But now, my friend, I must go. I shall never see 
the Land's End any more. But I have had it all to 
myself for these two hours; and it has become a pos- 
session forever. Yesterday it was a vague name ; 
now, it Is a clear picture, and it will always be so. It 
is not in the least like what I had expected. No per- 
son nor place you ever saw, is the least like what you 



AT THE LAND'S END. 231 

expected. But now, I seem to have known it for a 
long time. And ir is like parting from a friend to bid 
it good-by. But the black horse has rested, and has 
been fed ; and I have far to go to-day. 
Good-by I 



CHAPTER IX. 



CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 




OU know how a little child of three or 
four years old kicks and howls if it do 
not get its own way. You know how 
quietly a grown-up man takes it, when 
ordinary things fall out otherwise than he wished. A 
letter, a newspaper, a magazine, does not arrive by 
the post on the morning on which it had been particu- 
larly wished for, and counted on with certainty. The 
day proves rainy, when a fine day was specially de- 
sirable. The grown-up man is disappointed ; but he 
soon gets reconciled to the existing state of facts. He 
did not much expect that things would turn out as he 
wished them. Yes ; there is nothing like the habit 
of being disappointed, to make a man resigned when 
disappointment comes, and to enable him to take it 
quietly. And a habit of practical resignation grows 
upon most men, as they advance through life. 

You have often seen a poor beggar, most probably 
an old man, with some lingering remains of respecta- 
bility in his faded appearance, half ask an alms of a 



CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 233 

passer-by ; and you have seen him, at a word of re- 
pulse, or even on finding no notice taken of his re- 
quest, meekly turn away ; too beaten and sick at 
heart for enera:y ; drilled into a dreary resignation by 
the lonoj custom of finding; everythinjj go ajrainst him 
in this world. You may have known a poor cripple, 
who sits all day by the side of the pavement of a cer- 
tain street, with a little bundle of tracts in his hand, 
watching those who pass by, in the hope that they 
may give him something. I wonder, indeed, how the 
police suffer him to be there ; for though ostensibly 
selling the tracts, he is really begging. Hundreds of 
times in the long day, he must see people approach- 
ing ; and hope that they may spare him a half-penny ; 
and find ninety-nine out of each hundred pass without 
noticing him. It must be a hard school of Resigna- 
tion. Disappointments without number have subdued 
that poor creature into bearing one disappointment 
more with scarce an appreciable stir of heart. But 
on the other hand, kings, great nobles, and the like, 
have been known, even to the close of life, to violently 
curse and swear if things went against them ; going 
the length of stamping and blaspheming even at rain 
and wind, and branches of trees and plashes of mud, 
which were of course guiltless of any design of giving 
offence to these eminent individuals. There was a 
great monarch, who when any little cross-accident 
befell him, was wont to fling himself upon the floor ; 
and there to kick and scream and tear his hair. And 



234 CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 

around him, meanwhile, stood his awe-stricken attend- 
ants ; all doubtless ready to assuie him that there 
was something noble and graceful in his kicking and 
screaming, and that no human being had ever before 
with such dignity and magnanimity torn his hair. My 
friend Mr. Smith tells me that in his early youth he 
had a (very slight) acquaintance with a great Prince, 
of elevated rank and of vast estates. That great 
Prince came very early to his greatness ; and no one 
had ever ventured, since he could remember, to tell 
him he had ever said or done wrong. Accordingly, 
the Prince had never learned to control himself; nor 
grown accustomed to bear quietly what he did not 
like. And when any one, in conversation, related to 
him something which he disapproved, he used to start 
from his chair, and rush up and down the apartment, 
furiously flapping his hands together, till he had thus 
blown otF the steam produced by the irritation of his 
nervous system. That Pi-ince was a good man ; and 
so aware was he of his infirmity, that when in these 
fits of passion, he never sufFeied himself to say a single 
word ; being aware that he might say what he would 
afterwards regret. And though he could not wholly 
restiain himself,, the entire wrath he felt passed off in 
flapping. And after flapping for a few minutes, he 
sat down again, a rea-onable man once more. All 
honor to him ! For my friend Smith tells me that 
that Prince was surrounded by toadies, who were 
ready to praise everything he might do, even to his 



CONCERNING EESIGNATION. 235 

flapping. And in particular, there was one humble 
retainer, who, whenever his master flapped, was wont 
to hold up his hands in an ecstasy of admiration, ex- 
claiming, '' It is the flapping of a god, and not of a 
man ! " 

Now all this lack of Resignation on the part of 
princes and kings comes of tiie fact, that they are so 
far like children that they have not become accus- 
tomed to be resisted, and to be obliged to forego what 
they would like. Resignation comes by the habit of 
being disappointed, and of finding things go against 
you. It is, in the case of ordinary human beings, just 
what they expect. Of course, you remember the ad- 
age : " Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he 
shall not be disappointed." I have a good deal to say 
about that adage. Reasonableness of expectation is a 
great and good thing ; despondency is a thing to be 
discouraged and put down as far as may be. But 
meanwhile let me say, that the corollary drawn from 
that dismal beatitude seems to me unfounded in fact. 
I should say just the contrary. I should say, " Bless- 
ed is he who expecteth nothing, for he will very likely 
be disappointed." You knovv, my reader, whether 
things do not generally happen the opposite way from 
that which you expected. Did you ever try to keep 
off an evil you dreaded, by interposing this buffer? 
Did you ever think you might perhaps prevent u 
trouble from coming, by constantly anticipatiug it ; 
keeping, meanwhile an under -thought that things 



236 CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 

rarely happened as you anticipate tliem ; and thus 
your anticipation of tlie tiling might possibly keep 
it away ? Ot" course you have ; for you are a liuman 
being. And in all common cases, a watch might as 
well think to keep a skilful watchmaker in ignorance 
of the way in which its movements are produced, as a 
human being think to prevent another human being 
from knowing exactly how he will think and feel in 
given circumstances. We have watched the work- 
ing of our own watches far too closely and long, my 
friends, to have the least difficulty in understanding 
the great [)rinciples upon which the watches of other 
men go. I cannot look inside your breast, my reader, 
and see the machinery that is working there ; I mean 
the machinery of thought and feeling. But I know 
exactly how it works, nevertheless ; for I have long 
■watched a machinery piecisely like it. 

There are a great many pcojde in this woi-ld who 
feel th;it things are all wrong, that they have missed 
stays in life, that they are beaten, — and yet who don't 
much mind. They are indurated by long use. They 
do not try to disguise from themselves the facts. 
There are some men who diligently try to disguise 
the facts, and who in some measure succeed in doing 
so. I have known a self-sufficient and disagreeable 
clergyman who had a clmrcli in a hirge city. Five 
sixths of the seats in the chui'ch were quite empty ; 
yet the clergyman often talked of what a good con- 
gregation he had, with a confidence which would have 



CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 237 

deceived any one who had not seen it. I have known 
a cluireh where it was agony to any one with an ear 
to hsten to the noise produced when tlie people were 
singing; yet the clergyman often talked of what splen- 
did music he had. 1 liave known an entirely briefless 
barrister, whose friends gave out that the sole reason 
why he had no briefs was that he did not want any. 
I have known students who did not get the prizes for 
which they competed ; but who declared that the rea- 
son of their failure was, that though they competed 
for the prizes, they did not wish to get them. I have 
known a fast young woman, after many engagements 
made and broken, marry as the last resort a brainless 
and penniless blackguard ; yet all her family talk in 
big terms of what a delightful connection she was 
making. Now, where all that self-deception is gen- 
uine, let us be glad to see it ; and let us not, like Mr. 
Snarling, take a spiteful pleasure in undeceiving those 
who are so happy to be deceived. In most cases, in- 
deed, such trickery deceives nobody. But where it 
truly deceives those who practise it, even if it deceive 
nobody else, you see there is no true Resignation. A 
man who has made a mess of life has no need to be 
resigned, if he fancies he has succeeded splendidly. 
But I look with great interest, and often with deep 
respect, at the man or woman who feels that life has 
been a failure, — a failure, that is, as regards this world, 
— and yet who is quite resigned. Yes; whether it be 
the unsoured old maid, sweet-tempered, sympathetic 



238 CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 

in otlicrs' joys, God's kind angel in the house of sor- 
row, — or the unappreciated genius, quiet, subdued, 
pleased to meet even one who understands him amid 
a community which does not, — or the kind-hearted 
clever man to whom eminent success has come too 
late, when those were gone wiiom it would have made 
happy : I reverence and love, more than I can ex- 
press, the beautiful natures I have known thus sub- 
dued and resigned ! 

Yes ; human beings get indurated. When you 
come to know well the history of a great many people, 
you Avill find that it is wonderful what they have 
passed through. Most people have suffered a very 
great deal, since they came into this world. Yet, in 
their appearance, there is no particular trace of it all. 
You would not guess, from looking at them, how hard 
and how various their lot has been. I once knew a 
woman, rather more than middle-aged. I knew her 
well, and saw her almost evei'y day, for several years, 
before I learned that the homely Scotchwoman had 
seen distant lands, and had passed through very 
strange ups and downs, before she settled into the 
quiet orderly life in which I knew her. Yet when 
spt)ken to kindly, by one who expressed surprise that 
all these trials had left so little trace, the inward find- 
ing, commonly suppressed, burst bitterly out ; and she 
exclaimed, " It's a wonder that I'm living at all ! " 
And it is a wonder that a great many people are liv- 



CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 239 

in^^, and looking so cheerful and so well as they do, 
when you think what fiery passion, what crushing sor- 
row, what terrible losses, what bitter disa])pointinents, 
what hard and protracted work, they have gone 
through. Doubtless, great good conies of it. All 
wisdom, all experience, comes of suffering. I should 
not care much for the counsel of the man whose life 
had been one long sunshiny holiday. There is greater 
depth in the philosophy of Mr. Dickens, than a great 
portion of his readers discern. You are ready to 
smile at the singular way in which Captain Cuttle 
commended his friend Jack Bunsby as a man of extra- 
ordinary wisdom ; whose advice on any point was of 
inestimable value. " Here's a man," said Captain 
Cuttle, " who has been more beaten about the head 
than any other living man ! " I hail the words as the 
recognition of a great principle. To Mr. Bunsby, it 
befell in a literal sense ; but we have all been (in a 
moral sense) a good deal beaten about the head and 
the heart before we grew good for much. Out of the 
travail of his nature ; out of the sorrowful history of 
his past life ; the poet or the moralist draws the deep 
thought and feeling which find so straight a way to 
the hearts of other men. Do you think Mr. Tenny- 
son would ever have been the great poet he is, if he 
had not passed through that season of great grief 
which has left its noble record in " In Memoriam " ? 
And a youthful preacher, of vivid imagination and 
keen feeling, little fettered by anything in the nature 



240 CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 

of good taste, may by strong statements and a fiery 
manner draw a mob of untliinking hearers ; but 
thoughtful men and women will not find anything in 
all that^ that awakens the response of their inner 
nature in its truest depths ; they must have religious 
instruction into which real experience has been trans- 
fused ; and the worth of the instruction will be in 
direct proportion to the amount of real experience 
which is embodied in it. And after all, it is better to 
be wise and good than to be gay and happy, if we 
must choose between the two things ; and it is worth 
while to be severely beaten about the head, if that is 
the condition on which alone we can gain true wisdom. 
True wisdom is cheap at almost any price. But it does 
not follow at all that you will be happy (in the vulgar 
sense) in direct proportion as you are wise. I sup- 
pose most middle-aged people, when they receive the 
ordinary kind wish at New-Year's time of a Happy 
New Year, feel that happy is not quite the word ; and 
feel that^ too, though well aware that they have abun- 
dant reason for gratitude to a kind Providence. It is 
not here that we shall ever be happy ; that is, com- 
pletely and perfectly happy. Something will always 
be coming to worry and distress. And a hundred sad 
possibilities hang over us ; some of them only too cer- 
tainly and quickly drawing near. Yet people are 
content, in a kind of way. They have learned the 
great lesson of Resignation. 



CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 241 

There are many worthy people who would be quite 
fevered and flurried by good fortune, if it were to 
come to any very great degree. It would injure their 
heart. As for bad fortune, they can stand it nicely, 
they have been accustomed to it so long. I have 
known a very hard-wrought man, who had passed, 
rather early in life, through very heavy and protracted 
trials. I have heard him say, that if any malicious 
enemy wished to kill him, the course would be to 
make sure that tidings of some signal piece of prosper- 
ity should arrive by post on each of six or seven suc- 
cessive days. It would quite unhinge and unsettle 
him, he said. His heart would go ; his nervous sys- 
tem would break down. People to whom pieces of 
good luck come rare and small, have a great curiosity 
to know how a man feels when he is suddenly told 
that he has drawn one of the greatest prizes in the 
lottery of life. The kind of feeling, of course, will de- 
pend entirely on the kind of man. Yet very great 
prizes, in the way of dignity and duty, do for the most 
part fall to men who in some measure deserve them, 
or who at least are not conspicuously undeserving of 
them and unfit for them. So that it is almost impossi- 
ble that the great news should elicit merely some un- 
worthy explosion of gratified self-conceit. The feeling 
would in almost every case be deeper, and worthier. 
One would like to be sitting at breakfast with a truly 
good man, when the letter from the Prime Minister 
comes in, offering him the Archbishopric of Canter. 
16 



242 CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 

bury. One would like to see how he would take it. 
Quietly, I have no doubt. Long preparation has fit- 
ted the man who reaches that position for taking it 
quietly. A recent Chancellor publicly stated how he 
felt when offered the Great Seal. His first feeling, 
that good man said, was of gratification that he had 
fairly reached the highest reward of the profession to 
which he had given his life ; but the feehng which 
speedily supplanted that, was an overwhelming sense 
of his responsibility and a grave doubt as to his quali- 
fications. I have always believed, and sometimes 
said, that good fortune, not so great or so sudden as 
to injure one's nerves or heart, but kindly and equa- 
ble, has a most wholesome effect upon human charac- 
ter. I believe that the happier a man is, the better 
and kinder he will be. The greater part of unamia- 
bility, ill-temper, impatience, bitterness, and uncharita- 
bleness, comes out of unhappiness. It is because a 
man is so miserable, that he is such a sour, suspicious, 
fractious, petted creature. I was amused, this morn- 
ing, to read in the newspaper an account of a very 
small incident which befell the new Primate of Eng- 
land on his journey back to London after being en- 
throned at Canterbury. The reporter of that small 
incident takes occasion to record that the Archbishop 
had quite charmed his travelling companions in the 
railway carriage by the geniality and kindliness of his 
manner. I have no doubt he did. I am sure he is a 
truly good Christian man. But think of what a splen- 



CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 243 

did training for producing geniality and kindliness he 
has been going through for a great number of years. 
Think of the moral influences which have been bear- 
ing on him for the last few weeks. We should all be 
kindly and genial, if we had the same chance of being 
so. But if Dr. Longley had a living of a hundred 
pounds a year, a fretful, ailing wife, a number of half- 
fed and half-educated little ciiildren, a dirty miserable 
house, a bleak country round, and a set of wrong- 
headed and insolent parishioners to keep straight, I 
venture to say he would have looked, and been, a 
very different man, in that railway carriage running 
up to London. Instead of the genial smiles that de- 
lighted his fellow-travellers (according to the newspa- 
per story), his face would have been sour and his 
speech would have been snappish ; he would have 
leaned back in the corner of a second-class carriage, 
sadly calculating the cost of his journey, and how part 
of it might be saved by going without any dinner. 
Oh, if I found a four-leaved shamrock, I would under- 
take to make a mighty deal of certain people I know ! 
I would put an end to their weary schemings to make 
the ends meet. I would cut off all those wretched 
cares which jar miserably on the shaken nerves. I 
know the burst of thankfulness and joy that ^ would 
come, if some dismal . load, never to be cast off, were 
taken away. And I would take it off. I would clear 
up the horrible muddle. I would make them happy ; 
and in doing that, I know that I should make them 
good ! 



244 CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 

But I have sought the four-leaved shamrock for a 
long time, and never have found it ; and so I am grow- 
ing subdued to the conviction that I never shall. Let 
us go back to the matter of Resignation, and think a 
little longer about that. 

Resignation, in any human being, means that things 
are not as you would wish, and yet that you are con- 
tent. Who has all that he wishes ? There are many 
houses in this world in which Resignation is the best 
tiling that can be felt any more. The bitter blow has 
fallen ; tlie break has been made ; the empty chair is 
left (perhaps a very little chair) ; and never more, 
while Time goes on, can things be as they were fondly 
wished and hoped. Resignation would need to be cul- 
tivated by human beings ; for all round us there is a 
multitude of things very different from what we would 
wish. Not in your house, not in your family, not in 
your street, not in your parish, not in your country, 
and least of all in yourself, can you have things as you 
would wish. And you have your choice of two alter- 
natives. You must either fret yourself into a nervous 
fever, or you must cultivate the habit of Resignation. 
And very often. Resignation does not mean that you 
are at all reconciled to a thing, but just that you feel 
you can do nothing to mend it. Some friend, to whom 
you are really attached, and whom you often see, 
vexes and worries you by some silly and disagreeable 
habit, — some habit which it is impossible you should 
ever like, or ever even overlook ; yet you try to make 



CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 245 

up your mind to it, because it cannot be helped, and 
you would rather submit to it than lose your friend. 
You hate the East-wind ; it withers and pinches you, 
in body and soul ; yet you cannot live in a certain 
beautiful city without feelino; the East-wind many days 
in the year. And that city's advantages and attrac- 
tions are so many and great, that no sane man, with 
sound lungs, would abandon the city merely to escape 
the East-wind. Yet, though resigned to the East-wind, 
you are anything but reconciled to it. 

Resignation is not always a good thing. Sometimes 
it is a very bad thing. You should never be resigned 
to things continuing wrong, when you may rise and 
set them i-ight. I dare say, in the Romish Church, 
there were good men before Luther, who were keenly 
alive to the errors and evils that had crept into it, but 
who, in despair of making things better, tried sadly to 
fix their thoughts upon other subjects ; who took to il- 
luminating missals, or constructing systems of logic, or 
cultivating vegetables in the garden of the monastery, 
or improving the music in the chapel, — quietly resign- 
ed to evils they judged irremediable. Great reformers 
have not been resigned men. Luther was not re- 
signed; Howard was not resigned; Fowell Buxton 
was not resigned ; George Stephenson w^as not re- 
signed. And there is hardly a nobler sight than that 
of a man who determines that he will not make up 
his mind to the continuance of some great evil ; who 
determines that he will give his life to battling 



246 CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 

with that evil to the last; who determines that either 
that evil shall extinguish him, or he shall extin- 
guish it ! I reverence the strong, sanguine mind, 
that resolves to work a revolution to better things, and 
that is not afraid to hope it can work a revolution ! 
And perhaps, my reader, we should both reverence it 
all the more that we find in ourselves very little like 
it. It is a curious thing, and a sad thing, to remark 
in how many people there is too much Resignation. 
It kills out energy. It is a weak, fretful, unhappy 
thing. People are reconciled, in a sad sort of way, 
to the fashion in which things go on. You have seen 
a poor, slaternly mother, in a way-sid(; cottage, who 
has observed her little children playing in the road 
before it, in tlie way of passing carriages, angrily 
ordering the little things to come away from their 
dangerous and dii-ty play ; yet when the children dis- 
obey her, and remain where they were, ju-t saying no 
more, making no farther effort. You have known a 
master tell his man-servant to do something about 
stable or garden ; yet when the servant does not do it, 
taking no notice : seeing that he has been disobeyed, 
yet wearily resigned, feeling that there is no use in 
always fighting. And I do not speak of the not un- 
frequent cases in which the master, after giving his 
orders, comes to discover that it is best they should 
not be carried out, and is very glad to see them disre- 
garded ; I mean when he is dissatisfied tiiat what he 
has directed is not done, and wishes that it were done, 



CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 247 

and feels worried by the whole affair ; yet Is so devoid 
of energy as to rest in a fretful Resignation. Some- 
times there is a sort of sense as if one had discharged 
his conscience by making a weak effort in the direction 
of doing a thing ; an effort which had not the slightest 
chance of being successful. When I was a little boy, 
many years since, I used to think this ; and I was led 
to thinking it by remarking a singular characteristic 
in the conduct of a school companion. In those days, 
if you were chasing some other boy who had injured 
or off'ended you, with the design of retaliation ; if you 
found you could not catch him, by reason of his su- 
perior speed, you would have recourse to the following 
expedient. If your companion was within a little 
space of you, though a space you felt you could not 
make less, you would suddenly stick out one of your 
feet, which would hook round his, and he, stumbling 
over it, would fall. I trust I am not suggesting a 
mischievous and dangerous trick to any boy of the 
present generation. Indeed I have the firmest belief 
that existing boys know all we used to know, and 
possibly, more. All this is by way of rendering intel- 
ligible what I have to say of my old companion. He 
was not a good runner. And when another boy gave 
him a sudden flick with a knotted handkerchief, or the 
like, lie had little chance of catching that other boy. 
Yet I have often seen him when chasing another, be- 
fore finally abandoning the pursuit, stick out his foot 
in the regular way, though the boy he was chasing 



248 CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 

was yards beyond his reach. Often did the present 
writer meditate on that phenomenon, in the days of 
his boyhood. It appeared curious that it should afford 
some comfort to the evaded pursuer, to make an offer 
at upsetting the escaping youth, — an offer which could 
not possibly be successful. But very often, in after 
life, have I beheld, in the conduct of grown-up men 
and women, the moral hkeness of that futile sticking 
out of the foot. I have beheld human beings who 
lived in houses always untidy and disorderly, or whose 
affairs were in a horrible confusion and entanglement, 
who now and then seemed roused to a feeling that this 
would not do ; who querulously bemoaned their miser- 
able lot, and made some faint and futile attempt to set 
things right ; attempts which never had a chance to 
succeed, and which ended in nothing. Yet it seemed 
somehow to pacify the querulous heart. I have 
known a clergyman in a parish with a bad population, 
seem suddenly to waken up to a conviction that he 
must do something to mend matters, and set a-going 
some weak little machinery, which could produce no 
appreciable result, and which came to a stop in a few 
weeks. Yet that faint offer appeared to discharge the 
claims of conscience, and after it the clergyman re- 
mained a long time in a comatose state of unhealthy 
Resignation. But it is a miserable and a wrong kind 
of Resignation which dwells in that man, who sinks 
down, beaten and hopeless, in the presence of a recog- 
nized evil. Such a man may be in a sense resigned, 
but he cannot possibly be content. 



CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 249 

If you should ever, when you have reached middle 
age, turn over the diary or the letters you wrote 
in the hopeful though foolish days when you were 
eighteen or twenty, you will be av;are how quietly 
and gradually the lesson of Resignation has been 
taught you. You would have got into a terrible state 
of excitement, if any one had told you then that you 
would have to forego your most cherished hopes and 
wishes of that time, and it would have tried you even 
more severely to be assured that, in not many years 
you would not care a single straw for the things and 
the persons who were then uppermost in your mind 
and heart. What an entirely new set of friends and 
interests is that which now surrounds you, and how 
completely the old ones are gone ! Gone, like the 
sunsets you remember in the summers of your child- 
hood, — gone, like the primroses that grew in the 
woods where you wandered as a boy. Said my friend 
Smith to me a few days ago, " You remember Miss 
Jones and all about that? I met her yesterday, after 
ten years. She is a fat, middle-aged, ordinary-looking 
woman. What a terrific fool I was ! " Smith spoke 
to me in the confidence of friendship, yet I think he 
was a little mortified at the heartiness with which I 
agreed with him on the subject of his former folly. 
He had got over it completely, and in seeing that he 
was (at a certain period) a fool, he had come to dis- 
cern that of which his friends had always been aware. 
Of course early interests do not always die out. You 



250 CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 

remember Dr. Chalmers, and the ridiculous exhi- 
bition about the wretched little likeness of an early 
sweetheart, not seen for forty years, and long since in 
her grave. You remember the singular way in which 
he signified his remembrance of her, in his famous 
and honored age. I don't mean the crying, nor the 
walking up and down the garden-walk, calling her by 
fine names. I mean the taking out his card, — not 
his carte^ you could understand that ; but his visit- 
ing-card bearing his name, — and sticking it behind 
the portrait with two wafers. Probably it pleased 
him to do so, and assuredly it did harm to no one 
else. And we have all heard of the like things. 
Early affections are sometimes, doubtless, cherished 
in the memory of the old. But still, more material 
interests come in, and the old affection is crowded out 
of its old place in the heart. And so those compara- 
tively fanciful disappointments sit lightly. The ro- 
mance is gone. The midday sun beats down, and 
there lies the dusty way. When the cantankerous and 
unamiable mother of Christopher North stopped his 
marriage with a person at least as respectable as her- 
self, on the ground that the person was not good 
enough, we are told that the future professor nearly 
went mad, and that he never quite got over it. But 
really, judging from his wi-itings and his biography, 
he bore up under it, after a little, wonderfully well. 

But looking back to the days which tlie old yellow 
letters bring back, you will think to yourself, Where 



CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 251 

are the hopes and anticipations of that time? You 
expected to be a great man, no doubt. Well, you 
know you are not. You are a small man, and never 
will be anything else, yet you are quite resigned. If 
there be an argument which stirs me to indignation at 
its futility, and to wonder that any mortal ever re- 
garded it as of the slightest force, it is that which is 
set out in the famous soliloquy in Cato, as to the 
Immortality of the Soul. Will any sane man say, 
that if in this world you wish for a thing very much, 
and anticipate it very clearly and confidently, you are 
therefore sure to get it ? U that were so, many a 
little schoolboy would end by driving his carriage 
and four, who ends by driving no carriage at all. I 
have heard of a man whose private papers were found 
after his death all written over with his signature as 
he expected it would be when he became Lord Chan- 
cellor. Let us say that his peerage was to be as 
Lord Smith. There it was, Smith, C, Smith, C, 
written in every conceivable fashion, so that the sig- 
nature, when needed, might be easy and imposing. 
That man had very vividly anticipated the woolsack, 
the gold robe, and all the rest. It need hardly be 
said he attained none of these. The famous argu- 
ment, you know, of course, is that man has a great 
longing to be immortal, and that therefore he is sure 
to be immortal. Rubbish ! It is not true that any 
longing after immortality exists in the heart of a hun- 
dredth portion of the race. And if it were true, it 



252 CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 

would prove immortality no more than the manifold 
signature of Smith, C, proved that Smith was indeed 
to be Chancellor. No ; we cling to the doctrine of a 
Future Life, — we could not live without it; but we 
believe it, not because of undefined lonsings within 
ourselves, not because of reviving plants and flowers, 
not because of the chrysalis and the butterfly, but 
because " our Saviour, Jesus Christ, hath abolished 
death, and brought life and immortality to light 
through the gospel ! " 

There is something very curious and very touching, 
in thinking how clear and distinct, and how often re- 
curring, were our early anticipations of things that 
were never to be. In this world, the fact is for the 
most part the opposite of what it should be to give 
force to Plato's (or Cato's) argument ; the thing you 
vividly anticipate is the thing that is least likely to 
come. The thing you don't much care for, the thing 
you don't expect, is the likeliest. And even if the 
event prove what you anticipated, the circumstan- 
ces and the feeling of it will be quite different from 
what you anticipated. A certain little girl three years 
old was told that in a little while she was to go with 
her parents to a certain city a hundred miles off, a city 
which may be called Altenburg as well as anything 
else. It was a great delight to her to anticipate that 
journey, and to anticipate it very circumstantially. It 
was a delight to her to sit down at evening on her 
father's knee, and to tell him all about how it would 



CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 253 

be in going to Altenburg. It was always the same 
thing. Always, first, how sandwiches would be made ; 
how they would all get into the carriage (which would 
come round to the door), and drive away to a certain 
railway station ; how they would get their tickets, and 
the train would come up, and they would all get into a 
carriage together, and lean back in corners, and eat 
the sandwiches, and look out of the windows, and so 
on. But when the journey was actually made, every 
single circumstance in the little girl's anticipations 
proved wrong. Of course, they were not intentionally 
made wrong. Her parents would have carried out to 
the letter, if they could, what the little thing had so 
clearly pictured and so often repeated. But it proved 
to be needful to go by an entirely different way and in 
an entirely different fashion. All those little details, 
dwelt on so much and with so much interest, were 
things never to be. It is even so with the anticipations 
of larger and older children. How distinctly, how 
fully,, my friend, we have pictuiv3d out to our minds 
a mode of life, a home and the country round it, and 
the multitude of little things which make up the habi- 
tude of being, which we long since resigned ourselves 
to knowing could never prove realities ! No doubt, it 
is all right and well Even St. Paul, with all his gift 
of prophecy, was not allowed to foresee what was to 
happen to himself. You know how he w^rote that he 
would do a certain thing, " as soon as I shall see how 
it will £0 with me ! " 



254 CONCERNING RESIGNATION. 

But our times are in the Best Hand. And the one 
thing about our lot, my reader, that we may think of 
with perfect contentment, is that they are so. I know 
nothing more admirable in spirit, aiid few things more 
charmingly expressed, than that little poem by Mrs. 
Waring which sets out that comfortable thought. You 
know it, of course. You should have it in your 
memory ; and let it be one of the first things your chil- 
dren learn by heart. It may well come next after " O 
God of Bethel : " it breathes the self-same tone. And 
let me close these thoughts with one of its verses : 

There are briers besetting ever}- path, 

Which call for patient care : 
There is a cross in every lot. 

And an earnest need for prayer :- 
But a lowly heart that leans on Thee, 

Is liappy anywhere ! 




CHAPTER X. 
CONCERNING THINGS WHICH CANNOT GO ON. 

F course, in the full meaning of the words^ 
Ben Nevis is one of the Things that can- 
not Go On. And among these, too, we 
may reckon the Pyramids. Likewise the 
unchanging ocean ; and all the everlasting hills, which 
cannot be removed, but stand fast forever. 

But it is not such things that I mean by the phrase ; 
it is not such things that the phrase suggests to ordi- 
nary people. It is not things which are passing, in- 
deed, but passing so very slowly, and with so little 
sign as yet of their coming end, that to human sense 
they are standing still. I mean things which even we 
can discern have not the element of continuance in 
them, — things which press it upon our attention as one 
of their most marked characteristics, that they have 
not the element of continuance in them. And you 
know there are such things. Things too good to last 
very long. Things too bad to be borne very long. 
Things which as you look at, you say to yourself, Ah, 
it is just a question of time ! We shall not have you 
long! 



256 CONCERNING THINGS 

This, as it appears to me, my reader, is the essen- 
tial quality which makes us class anything among the 
Things which cannot Go On : it is that the thing 
should not merely be passing away, or even passing 
away fast ; but that it shall bear on its very face, as 
the first thing that strikes us in looking at it, that it is 
so. There are passing things that have a sort of per- 
ennial look, — things that will soon be gone, but that 
somehow do not press it upon us that they are going. 
If you had met Christopher North, in his daj's of af- 
fluent physical health, swinging along with his fishing- 
rod towards the Tweed, you might, if you had re- 
flected, have thought that in truth all that could not 
go on. The day would come when that noble and 
lovable man would be very different ; when he would 
creep along slowly, instead of tearing along with that 
springy pace ; when he would no longer be able to 
thrash pugnacious gypsies, nor to outleap flying tail- 
ors ; wlien he would not sit down at morning in his 
dusty study, and rush through the writing of an ar- 
ticle as he rushed through other things, impetuously, 
determinedly, and with marvellous speed, and hardly 
an intermission for rest ; when mind and body, in 
brief, would be unstrung. But that was not what you 
thought of, in the sight of that prodigal strength and 
activity. At any rate, it was not the thought that 
came readiest. But when you see the deep color on 
the cheek of a consumptive girl, and the too bright 
eye ; when you see a man awfully overworking him- 



WHICH CAKNOT GO ON. 257 

self; when you see a human being wrought up to a 
frantic enthusiasm in some cause, good or bad ; when 
you find a lady declaring that a recently acquired ser- 
vant, or a new-found friend, is absolute perfection ; 
when you see a church, crowded to discomfort, pas- 
sages and all, by people who come to listen to its pop- 
ular preacher ; when you go to hear the popular 
preacher for yourself, and are interested and carried 
away by a sermon, evincing such elaborate prepara- 
tion as no man, with the duty of a parish resting upon 
him, could possibly find time for in any single week, 
— and delivered with overwhelming vehemence of 
voice and gesture ; when you hear of a parish in 
which a new-come clergyman has set a-going an 
amount of parochial machinery which it would need 
at least three and probably six clergymen to keep 
working ; when you see a family living a cat and dog 
life ; wlien you see a poor fellow, crushed down by 
toil and anxiety, setting towards insanity; when you 
find a country gentleman, with fifteen hundred a year, 
spending five thousand ; when you see a man submit- 
ting to an insufferable petty tyranny, and commanding 
himself by a great eflTort, repeated several times a day, 
so far as not just yet to let fly at the tyrant's head ; 
when you hear of King Boniba gagging and murder- 
ing his subjects, amid the reprobation of civilized 
mankind ; when you see the stoker of an American 
steamer sitting upon his safety-valve, and observe 
that the indicator shows a pressure of a hundred 
■ 17 



258 CONCERNING THINGS 

and fifty pounds on tlie square inch of his boiler; 
tlien, my friend, looking at such things as these, and 
beholding the end. impending and the explosion im- 
minent, you would say that these are Things which 
cannot Go On. 

And then, besides the fact that in the case of very 
many of the Things which cannot Go On, you can 
discern the cause at work that must soon bring them 
to an end ; there is a further matter to be considered. 
Human beings are great believers in what may be 
called the doctrine of Average. That is a deep con- 
viction, latent in the ordinary mind, and the result of 
all its experience, that anything very extreme cannot 
last. If you are sitting on a winter evening in a 
chamber of a country house which looks to the north- 
east, and if a tremendous batter of wind and sleet 
suddenly dashes against the windows with a noise loud 
enough to attract the attention of everybody, I am 
almost sure that the first thing that will be said, by 
somebody or other, in the first momentary lull in 
which it is possible to hear, will be, " Well, that can- 
not last long." We have in our minds, as regards all 
things moral and physical, some idea of what is the 
average state of matters ; and whenever we find any 
very striking di^viation from that, we feel assured that 
the deviation will be but temporary. When you are 
travelling by railway, even through a new and strik- 
ing country, the first few miles enable you to judge 
what you may expect. The country may be very dif- 



WHICH CANNOT GO ON. 259 

ferent indeed from that which you are accustomed to 
see, day by day ; but still, a little observation of it 
enables you to strike an average, so to speak, of that 
country. And if you come suddenly to anything 
especially remarkable, — to some enormously lofty via- 
duct, whence you look down upon the tops of tall trees 
and upon a foaming stream, or (o some tunnel through 
a huge hill, or to some bridge of singular structure, 
or to some tract wonderfully wooded or wonderfully 
bare, — you involuntarily judge that all this is some- 
thing exceptional, that it cannot last long, that you 
will soon be through it, and back to the ordinary jog- 
trot way. 

And now, my friend, let me recall to mind certain 
facts connected with the great order of Things which 
cannot Go On ; and let us compare our experience 
with regard to these. 

Have you a residence in the country, small or great ? 
Have you ever had such a residence ? If you have 
one, or ever have had one, I have no doubt at all but 
there is or was a little gravelled walk, which you were 
accustomed often to walk up and down. You walked 
there, thinking of things painful and things pleasant. 
And if nature and training made you the human be- 
ing for a country life, you found that that little gi-av- 
elled path could do you a great deal of good. When 
you went forth, somewdiat worried by certain of thp 
little cares which worry at the time but are so speedily 
forgotten, and walked up and down, you found tliat 



260 CONCERNING THINGS 

at each turn you took, the path, with its evergreens at 
either hand, and with here and there a little bay of 
green grass running into the thick masses of green 
boughs and leaves, gently pressed itself upon your at- 
tention, — a patient friend, content to wait your time. 
And in a little space, no matter whether in winter oi' 
in summer, the path with its belongings filled your 
mind with pleasant little thoughts and cares, and 
smoothed your forehead and quieted your nervous 
system. I am a great believer in grass and ever- 
greens and gravelled walks. Was it not pleasant, 
when a bitter wind was blowing outside your little realm, 
to walk in the shelter of the yews and hollies, where 
the air felt so snug and calm ; and now and then to 
look out beyond your gate, and catch the bitter East 
on your face, and then turn back again to the warm, 
sheltered walk ! Beautiful in frost, beautiful in snow, 
beautiful in rain, beautiful in sunshine, are clumps of 
evergreens, is green grass ; and cheerful and health- 
ful to our whole moral nature is the gravelled walk 
that winds between ! 

But all this is by the way. It is not of gravelled 
walks in general that I am to speak, but of one 
special {)henomenon concerning such walks, and bear- 
ing u[)on my proper subject. If you are walking up 
and down a path, let us say a hundred and fifty yards 
long, talking to a friend, or holding conversation with 
yourself, — and if at each turn you take, you have to 
bend your head to pass under an overhanging bough, — 



WHICH CANNOT GO ON. 261 

here is what will happen. To bend your head for 
once, will be no effort. You will do it instinctively, 
and never think about the matter. To stoop even 
six times, will not be much. But if you walk up and 
down for an hour, that constant evading of the over- 
hanging bough will become intolerably irksome. For 
a little, it is nothing ; but you cannot bear it, if it is a 
thing that is to go on. Here is a fact in human na- 
ture. You can stand a very disagreeable and painful 
thing for once ; or for a little while. But a veiy small 
annoyance, going on unceasingly, grows insufferable. 
No annoyance can possibly be slighter than that a 
drop of cold water should fall upon your bare head. 
But you are aware that those ingenious persons, who 
have investigated the constitution of man with the 
design to discover the sensitive places where man can 
feel torture, have discovered what can be got out of 
that falling drop of water. Continue it for an hour; 
continue it for a day ; and it turns to a refined agony. 
It is a thing which cannot go on long, without driving 
the sufferer mad. No one can say what the effect 
might be, of compelling a human being to spend a 
week, walking, through all his waking hours, in a path 
where he had to bend his head to escape a branch 
every minute or so. You, my reader, did not ascer- 
tain by experiment what would be the effect. How- 
ever pretty the branch might be, beneath which you 
had to stoop, or round which you had to dodge, at 
every turn, that branch must go. And you cut away 



262 CONCERNING THINGS 

the blossoming apple-branch ; you trained in another 
direction the spray of honeysuckle ; you sawed off the 
green bough, beautiful with the soft beechen leaves. 
They had become things which you could not suffer 
to go on. 

Have you ever been misled into living in your 
house, during any portion of the time in which it was 
being painted? If so, you remember how you had to 
walk up and down stairs on planks, very steep and 
slippery ; how, at early morning, a sound pervaded 
the dwelling, caused by the rubbing your doors with 
stones, to the end of putting a smoother surface upon 
the doors ; how your children had to abide in certain 
apartments underground, to be beyond the reach of 
paint and brushes and walls still wet. The discom- 
fort was extreme. You could not have made up your 
mind to go on through Hfe, under the hke conditions ; 
but you bore it patiently, because it was not to go on. 
It was as when you shut your eyes, and squeeze 
through a thicket of brambles, encouraged by the hope 
of reaching the farther side. So when you are obliged 
to ask a man to dinner, with whom you have not. an 
idea or sympathy in common. Suppressing the ten- 
dency to yawn, you force yourself to talk about things 
in which you have not the faintest interest ; and you 
know better than to say a word upon the subjects for 
which you really care. You could not stand this, 
were it not that from time to time you furtively glance 
at the clock, and tliink that the time of deliverance is 



WHICH CANNOT GO ON. 263 

drawing near. And on the occasion of a washing-day, 
or a change of cook, you put up without a murmui 
with a dinner to which you could not daily subdue 
your heart. We can go on for a little space, carried 
by the impetus previously got, and by the ho[)e ot 
what lies before us. It is like the dead points in the 
working of a steam-engine. You probably know that 
many river steamboats have but a single engine, and 
that there are two points, each reached every few 
seconds, at which a single engine has no power at all. 
The paddle-wheels continue to turn, in virtue of the 
strong impetus already given them. Now, it is 
plain to every mind, that if the engine remained for 
any considerable period at the point where it is abso- 
lutely powerless, the machinery driven by the engine 
would stop. But, in practice, the difficulty is very 
small, because it is but for a second or two that the 
engine remains in this state of paralysis. It does 
quite well for a little, but is a state that could not go 
on. 

Any very extreme feeling, in a commonplace mind, 
is a thing not likely to go on long. Very extravagant 
likes and dislikes, very violent grief, such as people 
fancy must kill them, will, in most cases, endure not 
long. In short, anything that flies in the face of the 
laws which regulate the human mind, anything which 
is greatly opposed to Nature's love for the Average, 
cannot, in general, go on. I do not forget, that there 
are striking exceptions. There are people who never 



264 CONCElimNG THINGS 

quite get over some great grief or disappointment ; 
there are people who form a fixed resolution, and hold 
by it all through life. I have seen more than one or 
two men and women, whose whole soul and energy 
were so devoted to some good work, that a stranger, 
witnessing their doings for a few days and hearing 
their talk, would have said, " That cannot last. It 
must soon burn itself out, zeal like that ! " But if you 
had made inquiry, you would have learned that all 
that had gone on unflagging, for ten, twenty, thirty 
years. There must have been sound and deep prin- 
ciple there at the first, to stand the wear of such a 
time ; and you may well believe that the whole nature 
is now confirmed irretrievably in the old habit ; you 
may well hope that the good Christian and philanthro- 
pist who has gone on for thirty years will go on as 
long as he lives, — will go on forever. But, as a 
general rule, I have no great faith in the stability of 
human character ; and I have great faith in the law 
of Average. People will not go on very long, doing 
what is inconvenient for them to do. And I will back 
Time against most feelings and most resolutions in 
human hearts. It will beat them in the end. You 
are a clergyman, let us suppose. Your congregation 
are fond of your sermons. They have got into your 
way; and if so, ihey probably like to hear you preach 
better than anybody else ; unless it be the two or three 
very great men. A family, specially attached to you, 
moves from a house near the church to another two 



WHICH CANNOT GO ON. 265 

or three miles away. They tell you, that nothing 
shall prevent their coming to their accustomed places 
every Simday still : they would come, though the 
distance were twice as great. They are perfectly sin- 
cere. But your larger experience of such cases 
makes you well aware that time and distance and 
mud and rain and hot sunshine will beat them. 
Coming to church over that inconvenient distance, 
is a thing that cannot go on ; it is a thing that ought 
not to go on ; and you make up your mind to the 
fact. You cannot vanquish the laws of Nature. 
You may make water run up-hill, by laborious pump- 
ing. But you cannot go on pumping forever; and 
whenever the water is left to its own nature, it will 
certainly run down-hill. All such declarations as 
" I shall never forget you ; " "I shall never cease 
to deplore your loss;" "I can never hold up my head 
again ; " may be ethically true ; but time will prove 
them logically false. The human being may be quite 
sincere in utterirfg them ; but he will change his mind. 
I do not mean to say that it is very pleasant to 
have to think thus ; or that much good can come of 
dwelling too long upon the idea. It is a very chilling 
and sorrowful thing, to be reminded of all this in the 
hard, heartless way in which some old people like to 
drive the sad truth into the young. It is very fit and 
right that the girl of twenty, broken-hearted now be- 
cause the young individual she is fond of is gone off 
to Australia, should believe that when he returns in 



266 CONCERNING THINGS 

five years he will find her unchanged, and should 
resent the remotest suggestion that by that time she 
Avill probably think and feel quite differently. It is fit 
and right that she should do all this, even though a 
prescient eye could discern that in two years exactly 
she will be married to somebody else, — and married, 
too, not to some old hunx of great wealth whom her 
parents have badgered her into marrying against her 
will, but (much worse for the man in Australia, who 
has meanwhile taken to drinking) married with all her 
heart to son^e fine young fellow, very suitable in age 
and all other respects. Yet, certain though the gen- 
eral principle may be, a wise and kind man or woman 
will not take much pleasure in imparting the sad les- 
son, taught by experience, to younger hearts. No good 
can come of doing so. Bide your time, my friend, 
and the laws of nature will prevail. Water will not 
long run up-hill. But while the stream is quite 
happy and quite resolute in flowing up an incline of 
one in twenty, there is no good in standing by it, and 
in roaring out that in a little while it will get tired of 
that. Experience tells us several things, which are 
not quite to the credit of our race ; and it is wrong 
to chill a hopeful and warm heart with these. We 
should be delighted to find that young heart falsifying 
them by its own history : let it do so if it can. 

And it is chilling and irritating to be often reminded 
of the refrigerating power of Time upon all warm feel- 
ings and resolutions. I have known a young clergy- 



WHICH CANNOT GO ON. 267 

man, appointed early in life to his first parish, and 
entering upon his duty with tremendous zeal. I think 
a good man, however old, would rejoice at such a 
sight, would delightedly try to direct and counsel all 
that hearty energy, and to turn all that labor to the 
best account. And even if he thought within himself 
that possibly all this might not quite last, I don't think 
he would go and tell the young minister so. And the 
aged man would thankfully remember, that he has 
known instances in which all that has lasted ; and 
would hope that in this instance it might last again. 
But I have known a cynical, heartless, time-hardened 
old man (the uncle, in fact, of my friend Mr. Snarl- 
ing) listen with a grin of mingled contem[)t and ma- 
lignity to the narration of the young parson's doings ; 
and explain the whole phenomena by a general prin- 
ciple, inexpressibly galling and discouraging to the 
young parson. " Oh," says the cynical, heartless old 
individual, " new brooms sweep clean ! " That was 
all. The whole thing was explained and settled. I 
should like to apply a new knout to the old individual, 
and see if it would cut smartly. 

And then we are to remember, that though it be 
only a question of time with the existence of anything, 
that does not prove that the thing is of no value. A 
great part of all that we are enjoying consists of 
Things which cannot Go On. And though the wear 
that there is in a thing be a great consideration in 
reckoning its worth ; and more especially, m the case 



268 CONCERNING THINGS 

of all Christian qualities, be the great test whether or 
not they are genuine ; yet things that are going, and 
going very fast, have their worth. And it is very fit 
that we should enjoy them while they last, without 
unduly overclouding our enjoyment of them by the 
recollection of their evanescence. " Why," said an 
eminent divine, — " why should we pet and pamper 
these bodies of ours, which are soon to be reduced to 
a state of mucilaginous fusion ? " There was a plausi- 
bility about the question ; and for about half a min- 
ute it tended to make you think, that it might be 
proper to leave off' taking your daily bath, and brush- 
ing your nails and teeth ; likewise that instead of pat- 
ronizing your tailor any further, it might be well to 
assume a horse-rug ; and also that it might be un- 
worthy to care for your dinner, and that for the future 
you should live on raw turnips. But of course, any- 
thing that revolts common sense, can never be a part 
of Christian doctrine or duty. And the natural reply 
to the rhetorical question I have quoted would of 
course be, that after these mortal frames are so fused, 
we, shall wholly cease to care for them ; but that 
meanwhile we shall suitably tend, feed, and clothe 
them, because it is comfortable to do so ; because it is 
God's manifest intention that we should do so ; be- 
cause great moral and spiritual advantage comes of 
our doing so ; and because you have no more right to 
disparage and neglect your wonderful mortal frame, 
than any other talent or gift confided to you by God. 



WHICH CANNOT GO ON. 269 

Why should we neglect, or pretend to neglect, these 
bodies of ours, with which we are commanded to glo- 
rify God ; which are bought with Christ's blood ; 
which, even through the last lowliness of mortal disso- 
lution, even when turned to dust again, are "still unit- 
ed to Christ ; " and which are to rise again in glory 
and beauty, and be the redeemed soul's companion 
through eternity ? And it is a mere sophism to put 
the shortness of a thing's continuance as a reason why 
it should not be cared for while it lasts. Of course, if 
it last but a short time, all the shorter will be the time 
through which we shall care for it. But let us make 
the best of things while they last ; both as regards our 
care for them and our enjoyment of them. 

That a thing will soon be done with, that the cloud 
will soon blow by, is a good reason for bearing 
patiently what is painful. But it is very needless to 
thrust in this consideration, to the end of spoiling the 
enjoyment of what is pleasant. I have seen people, 
when a little child, in a flutter of delighted anticipa- 
tion, was going away to some little merrymaking, anx- 
ious to put down its unseemly happiness by severely 
impressing the fact, that in a very few hours all the 
pleasure would be over, and lessons would begin 
again. And I have seen, with considerable wrath, a 
cloud descend upon the little face at the unwelcome 
suggestion. What earthly good is to come of this 
piece of stupid, well-meant malignity ? It originates, 
doubtless, in that great fundamental belief in many 



270 CONCERNING THINGS 

narrow mind;?, that the more uncomfortable you are 
the likeher you are to be right ; and that God is 
angry wlien he sees people happy. Unquestionably, 
most of the little enjoyments of life are very transient. 
All pleasant social gatheiings ; all visits to cheerful 
country houses ; all holidays ; are things which can- 
not go on. No doubt, that is true ; but that is no 
reason why we should sulkily refuse to enjoy them 
while they last. There is no good end secured, by 
persisting in seeing " towers decayed as soon as built.'* 
It is right, always latently, and sometimes expressly, 
to remember that they must decay ; but meanwhile, 
let us be thankful for their shelter and their beauty. 
Sit down, happily, on a July day, beneath the green 
shade of your beeches ; do not needlessly strain what 
little imagination you have, to picture those branches 
leafless, and the winter wind and clouds racking over- 
head. Enjoy your parcel of new books when it 
comes, coming not often ; cut the leaves peacefully, 
and welcome in each volume a new companion ; then 
carefully decide the fit place on your shelves where to 
dispose the pleasant accession to your store ; and do 
not vvoriy yourself by the reflection that when you 
die, the little library you collected may perhaps be 
scattered ; and the old, friendly-looking volumes fall 
into no one knows whose hands ; perha[)S be set forth 
on out-door book-stalls ; or be exhibited on the top of 
a wall, with a sack put over them when it begins to 
rain, as in a place which I have seen. " What is the 



WHICH CANNOT GO ON. 271 

use of washing my hands," said a Httle boy in my 
hearing ; " they will very soon be dirty again ! " Re- 
fuse, my reader, to accept the principle implied in the 
little boy's words, however specious it may seem. 
Whitewash your manse, if you be a Scotch minister, 
some time in April ; paint your house in town, how- 
ever speedily it may again grow black. Write your 
sermons diligently ; write them on the very best paper 
you can get, and in a very distinct and careful hand ; 
and pack them widi attention in a due receptacle. It 
is, no doubt, only a question of time how long they 
will be needed, before the day of your departure shall 
make them no more than waste paper. Yet, though 
things which cannot go on, you may hope to get no 
small use out of them, to others and to yourself, before 
the time when the hand that travelled over the pages 
shall be cold with the last chill ; and the voice that 
spoke these words shall be hushed forever. We 
know, obscurely, what we shall come to ; and by 
God's grace we are content, and we hope to be pre- 
pared ; but there is no need to overcast all life with 
the ceaseless anticipation of death. You may have 
read how John Hampden's grave was opened, at the 
earnest desire of an extremely fat nobleman who was 
his injudicious admirer. The poor wreck of humanity 
was there ; and, as the sexton said, " We propped him 
up with a shovel at his back, and I cut off a lock of 
his hair." I hold with Abraham, who " buried his 
dead from his sight ; " I hold with Shakspeare, who 



272 CONCERNING THINGS 

desired tliat no one should disturb him in his lowly 
bed, till He shall awaken him whose ri<j;ht it is to do 
so. Yet I read no lesson of the vanity of Hampden's 
life, in that last sad pictuie of helplessness and humili- 
ation. He had come to that ; yet all this does not 
show that his life was not a noble one while it lasted, 
though now it was done. He had his day ; and he 
used it ; whether well or ill let wiser men judge. 
And if it be right to say that he withstood tyranny, 
and helped to lay the foundation of his country's liber- 
ties, the whim of Lord Nugent and the propping up 
with the shovel can take nothing away from that. 

You understand me, my friend. You know the 
kind of people who revenge themselves upon liuman 
beings who meanwhile seem happy, by suggesting the 
idea that it cannot last. You see Mr. A., delighted 
with his beautiful new church ; you know how Miss 
B. thinks the man to whom she is to be married next 
week the handsomest, wisest, and best of mankind ; 
you behold the elation of Mr. C. about tliat new pair 
of horses he has got ; and if you be a malicious block- 
head, you may greatly console yourself in the specta- 
cle of the happiness of those individuals, by reflecting, 
and perhaps by saying, that it is all one of those things 
that cannot go on. Mr. A. will in a few months find 
no end of worry about that fine building ; Miss B.'s 
husband, at present transfigured to her view, will set- 
tle into the very ordinary being he is ; and Mr. C.'s 



WHICH CANNOT GO ON. 273 

horses will prove occasionally lame, and one of them a 
permanent roarer. Yet I think a wise man may say, 
I am aware I cannot go on very long ; yet I shall do 
my best in my little time. I look at the right hand 
which holds my pen. The pen will last but for a 
short space ; yet that is no reason why I should slight 
it now. The hand may go on longer. Yet, warm as 
it is now, and faithfully obeying ray will as it has 
done, through all those years, the day is coming when 
it must cease from its long labors. And, for myself, I 
am well content that it should be so. Let us not 
strive against the silent current, that bears us all away 
and away. Let us not quarrel with the reminders we 
meet on many country gravestones, addressed unto us 
who are living from the fathers who have gone before. 
Yet you will think of Charles Lamb. He said (but 
nobody can say when Elia meant what he said), " I 
conceive disgust at those impertinent and unbecoming 
familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. 
Every dead man must take upon himself to be lectur- 
ing me w^ith his odious truism, that ' Such as he now 
is I must shortly be.' Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, 
as thou imaginest. In the mean time I am ahve. I 
move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy 
betters ! " 

You may look on somewhat further, in a sweet 
country burying-place. Dear old church-yard, once 
so familiar, with the old oaks and the gliding river, 
and the purple hill looking over ; where the true 

18 



274 CONCERNING THINGS 

heart of Jeanie Deans has mouldered into dust ; I 
wonder what you are looking like to-day ! Many a 
time have I sat, in the quiet summer day, on a fiat 
stone, and looked at the green graves ; and thought 
that tliey were Things that could not Go On ! There 
were the graves of my predecessors ; the day would 
come when old people in the parish would talk, not 
unkindly, of the days, long ago, when some one was 
minister whose name is neither here nor there. But 
it was a much stranger thing to think, in that silent 
and solitary place, of the great stir and bustle there 
shall be in it some day ! Here it has been for centu- 
ries ; the green mossy stones and the little grassy un- 
dulations. But we know, from the best of all author- 
ity, that " the hour is coming " which shall make a 
total change. This quiet, this decay, this forgetful- 
ness, are not to Go On ! 

We look round, my reader, on all our possessions, 
and all our friends, and w^e discern that there are the 
elements of change in all. " I am content to stand 
still," says Elia, "at the age to which I am arrived, — I 
and my friends ; to be no younger, no richer, no hand- 
somer. I do not want to be weaned by age, or droj) 
like mellow fruit into the grave." There are indeed 
moods of mind in which all thouglitful men have pos- 
sibly yielded to a like feeling; but I never heard but 
of one other man whose deliberate wish was just to go 
on in this round of life forever. Yet, though content 
to be in the wise and kind hands in which we are, we 



WHICH CANNOT GO ON. 275 

feel it strange to find how all things are going. Your 
little children, my friend, are growing older, — growing 
out of their pleasant and happy childhood ; the old 
people round you are wrinkling up and breaking down. 
And in your constitution, in your way of life, there are 
things whicli cannot go on. There is some little phys- 
ical malady, always rather increasing ; and you cannot 
always be enlarging the doses of the medicine that is 
to correct it, or the opiates which make you sleep. I 
confess, with sorrow, that when I see an extraordina- 
rily tidy garden, or a man dressed with special trim- 
ness, I cannot help looking forward to a day when all 
that is to cease ; when the man will be somewhat slov- 
enly, — :when the garden will be somewhat weedy. I 
think especially of the garden ; and the garden which 
comes most home to me is the manse garden. It was 
a marvel of exquisite neatness and order ; but a new 
minister comes, who does not care for gardening, and 
all that goes. And though rejoicing greatly to see a 
parish diligently worked, yet sometimes I behold the 
parochial machinery driven with such a pressure of 
steam, that I cannot but think it never will last. I 
have known men who never could calmly think ; who 
lived in a hurry and a fever. There are places where 
it costs a constant effort, not always a successful effort, 
to avoid coming to such a life ; but let us strive against 
it. Let us not have constant push and excitement 
and high pressure. I hate to feel a whir around me, 
as of a huge cotton-mill. Let us " study to be quiet ! " 



276 CONCERNING THINGS 

And I havo, observed that clergymen who set that fe- 
verish machinery a-going, generally find it expedient to 
get away from it as speedily as may be, so as to avoid 
the discredit of its breaking down in their hands, — 
being well aware that it is a thing which cannot go on. 
We cannot always go on at a tearing gallop, with every 
nerve tense. Probably we are doing so a great deal 
too much. If so, let us definitively moderate our pace 
before the pace kills us. 

" It's a long lane that has no turning," says the prov- 
erb, testifying to the depth of human belief in the 
Average, testifying to our latent conviction that any- 
thing very marked is not likely to go on. A great 
many people, very anxious and unhappy and disap- 
pointed, cherish some confused hope that surely all 
this has lasted so long, things must be going to mend. 
The night has been so long, that morning must be 
near, even though there be not the least appearance of 
the dawn as yet. If you have been a briefless barris- 
ter, or an unemployed physician, or an unbeneficed 
clergyman for a pretty long time, even though there 
be no apparent reason now, more than years since, 
why success should come, you are ready to think that 
surely it must be coming now, at last. It seems to be 
overdue, by the theory of Average. Yet it is by no 
means certain that there is a good time coming, because 
the bad time has lasted long. Still, it is sometimes so. 
I have known a man very laborious, very unfortunate, 
with whom everything failed ; and after some years of 



WHICH CANNOT GO ON. 277 

this, I have seen a sudden turn of fortune come. And 
with exactly the same merit and the same industry as 
before, I have beheld him succeed in all he attempted, 
and gain no small eminence and reputation. " It be- 
hoved him to dree his weird," as was said by Meg 
Merrilies ; and then the good time came. If you are 
happy, my reader, I wish your happiness may last. 
And if you are meanwhile somewhat down and de- 
pressed, let us hope that all this may prove one of the 
Things which cannot Go On ! 

" Shall I go on ? " said Sterne, telling a touching 
story, familiar to most of us ; and he answered his 
question by adding " No." " It is good " said an em- 
inent author, " to make an end of a thing which might 
go on forever." And, on the whole, probably this 
Essay had better stop. And, at this genial season of 
kind wishes and old remembrances, we may fitly 
enough consider that these New Year's days cannot 
very often return to any. All this habitude of being 
cannot very long go on. Yet, in our little span here, 
we may gain possessions which never will fail. It is 
not a question of Time, with that which grows for 
Eternity ! God grant each of us, always more assur- 
edly, that Better Part which can Go On forever ! 



CHAPTER XI 
CONCERNING CUTTING AND CAEVING: 

WITH SOME THOUGHTS ON TAMPERING WITH THE 
COIN OF THE REALM. 



\ BEHELD, as in a Vision, the following 

(^ remarkable circumstances : 
*y\ ^C--^ There was a large picture, by that 
vT'^-^'^W great artist Mr. Q. R. Smith, hung up in 
a certain public place. It appeared to me that the 
locality partook of the nature of a market-place in a 
populous city : and numbers of human beings beheld 
the picture. A little vulgar boy passed, and looked 
at it : his words were these : " My eye ! A'n't it 
spicy ? Rather ! " A blooming maiden gazed upon 
it, and her remark was as follows : " Sweetly pretty ! " 
But a man who had long painted wagons for agricul- 
tural purposes, and who had recently painted a sign- 
board, after looking at the picture for a little, began 
to improve it with a large brush, heavily loaded with 
coarse red and blue, such as are used for painting 
wagons. Another man came, a house-painter : and 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 279 

he touched the picture, in several parts, with a brush 
filled with that white material which is employed for 
finishing the ceiling of rooms which are not very 
carefully finished. These persons, though horribly 
spoiling the picture, did honestly intend to improve 
it ; and they fancied they had much improved it. 
Finally there came a malicious person, who was him- 
self an artist ; and who envied and hated the first art- 
ist for painting so well. As for this man, he busied 
himself upon the principal figure in the picture. He 
made its eyes horribly to squint. He put a great 
excrescence on its nose. He painted its hair a lively 
scarlet. And having hideously disfigured the picture, 
he wrote beneath it, Q. R. Smith, pinxit. And he 
pointed out the canvas to all his friends, saying, 
" That's Smith's picture : isn't it beautiful V 

Into this Vision I fell, sitting by the evening fire. 
The immediate occasion of this Vision was, that I had 
been reading a little volume, prettily printed and 
nicely bound, purporting to be " The Children's Gar- 
land from the Best Poets, selected and arranged by 
Coventry Patmore." There I had been pleasantly 
reviving my recollection of many of the pieces, which 
I had been taught to read and repeat as a boy at 
school. And as I read, a sense of wonder grew, 
gradually changing to a feeling of indignation. I said 
to myself, Surely Mr. Coventry Patmore's modesty 
has led him to take credit on his title-page for much 
less than he deserves. He has not merely selected 
and arranged these pieces from the Best Poets: he 



280 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

has also (according to his own ideas) improved them. 
We have (I thought), in this volume, the picture of 
Q. R. Smith, touched up with red and whitewash, 
and having the eyes and nose aUered by the painter 
of signboards. Or, to speak more accurately, in read- 
ing this volume, we are requested to walk through a 
gallery of paintings by great masters, almost all im- 
proved, in many places, by the same painter of wagon- 
wheels, with the same large brush filled with coarse 
red. As we go on with the book, we come upon 
some poem which we have known all our lives, and 
every word of which is treasured and sacred in our 
memory. But we are made to feel that this is indeed 
our old friend : but his nose is cut off, and one of his 
eyes is put out. Such was my first hasty and unjust 
impression. Every poem of those I remembered 
from childhood had a host of verbal variations from 
the version in which I knew it. In Southey's well- 
known verses about " The Bell on the Inchcape 
Rock," I counted thirty-seven. There were a good 
many in Campbell's two poems ; one called " The 
Pari'ot," and the other about Napoleon and the Brit- 
ish sailor. So with Cowper's " Royal George : " so 
with Macaulay's " Armada." So with Scott's " Young 
Lochinvar : " so witli Byron's " Destruction of Sen- 
nacherib : " so with Wordsworth's poem as to the dog 
that watched many weeks by his dead master on 
Helvellyn : so with Goldsmith's " Good people all, 
of every sort : " so with Mrs. Heraans' " Graves 
of a Household." Mr. Patmore tells us in his 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 281 

Preface, that " in a very few instances he has ven- 
tured to substitute a word or phrase, where that 
of the author has made the piece in which it oc- 
curs unfit for children's reading." But, on my first 
reading of his book, it appeared that he had made 
alterations by scores, most of them so trivial as to be 
very irritating. But I proceeded to investigate. I 
compared Mr. Patmore's version of each poem with 
the version of each poem contained in the last edition 
of its author's works. And though I found a faw 
variations, made apparently through careless tran- 
scribing : and though I was annoyed by considerable 
disregard of the author's punctuation and capitals ; 
still it appeared that in the main Mr. Patmore gives 
us the pieces as their authors left them : while the 
versions of them, given in those books which are put 
into the hands of children, have, in almost every case, 
been touched up by nobody knows whom. So that 
when Mr. Patmore's book falls into the hands of men 
who made their first acquaintance with many of the 
pieces it contains in their schoolboy days, and who 
naturally prefer the version of them which is sur- 
rounded by the associations of that season : Mr. Pat- 
more will be unjustly accused of having cut and 
carved upon the dear old words. Whereas, in truth, 
the present generation has reason to complain of hav- 
ing been introduced to the wrong things in youth : so 
that now we cannot rightly appreciate the right 
things. And for myself, my first unjust suspicion of 



282 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

Mr. Patmope, speedily dispelled by investigation, led 
me to many thoughts upon the whole subject of liter- 
ary honesty and dishonesty in this matter. 

It seems to me quite essential that a plain princi- 
ple of common faithfulness should be driven into 
those persons who edit and publish the writings of 
other men. If you pretend to show us Raphael's pic- 
ture, let it be exactly as Raphael left it. But if your 
purpose be to exhibit the picture as touched up by 
yourself, do not mendaciously call the picture a 
Raphael. Call it what it is : to wit, Raphael altered 
and improved by Snooks. If you take a sovereign, 
and drill several holes in it, and fill them up with 
lead, you will be made to feel, should you endeavor to 
convey that coin into circulation, that though you may 
sell it for what it is worth as a sovereign plugged with 
lead, you had better not try to pass it off upon people 
as a genuine sovereign. All this is as plain as may 
be. But there are many collectors and editors of lit- 
tle poems, who take a golden piece by Goldsmith, 
Wordsworth, Campbell, or Moore : and punch out a 
word here and there, and stick in their own miserable 
little plug of pinchbeck. And then, having thus de- 
based the coin, they have the impudence to palm it 
off upon the world with the superscription of Gold- 
smith, Wordsworth, Campbell, or Moore. It is need- 
ful, I think, that some })lain principles of literary 
honesty should be instilled into cutting and carving 
editors. Even Mr. Palgrave, in his " Golden Treas- 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 283 

ury," is not free from some measure of blame ; though 
his sins are as nothing compared with those of the 
editors of school collections and volumes of sacred 
poetry. Mr. Palgrave has not punched out. gold to 
stick in pinchbeck : but in one or two glaring in- 
stances, he has punched out gold and left the vacant 
space. Every one knows that exquisite little poem 
of Hood's, " The Death Bed." That poem consists 
of four stanzas. Mr. Palgrave gives us in his book a 
poem which he calls " The Death Bed ; " and puts at 
the end of it the honored name of Hood. But it is 
not Hood's " Death Bed : " any more than a sover- 
eign with one half of it cut off would be a true sov- 
ereign. Mr. Palgrave gives us just two stanzas : 
Hood's first and last ; leaving out the two intermediate 
ones. In a note, whose tone is much too confident 
for my taste, Mr. Palgrave attempts to justify this 
tampering with the coin of the realm. He says that 
the omitted stanzas are very ingenious, but that inge- 
nuity is not in accordance with pathos. But what we 
want is Hood with his own peculiar characteristics : 
not Hood with the corners rubbed off to please even 
so competent a critic as Mr. Palgrave. In my judg- 
ment, the two omitted stanzas are eminently charac- 
teristic of Hood. I do not think they are very ingen- 
ious : they express simple and natural feelings : and 
they are expressed with a most touching and pathetic 
beauty. And on the whole, if you are to give the 
poem to the world as Hood's, they seem to have an 



284 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

especial right to stand in it. If you give a picture 
of a bison, surely you should give the hump : even 
though you may think tlie animal would be more 
graceful without it. We want to have the creature 
as God made it : with the peculiarities God gave it. 

The poems which are cut and carved to the ex- 
tremest degree are hymns. There is indeed some 
pretext of reason here : for it is necessary that hymns 
should be made, in respect of the doctrines they 
set forth, to fit the views of the people who are to 
sing them. Not that I think that this justifies the 
practice of adulterating the text. But in the few 
cases where a hymn has been altered so completely 
as to become virtually a new composition ; and a much 
better composition than it was originally : and where 
the autliorship is a matter reidly never thought of by 
the people who devoutly use the hymn ; something is 
to be said for this tampering. For the hymn is not 
set forth as a poem written by this man or that : 
but merely as a piece which many hands may have 
brought into its present shape ; and which in its pres- 
ent shape suits a specific purpose. You don't daub 
Raphael's picture with wagon paint; and still exhibit 
it as a Raphael. You touch it up according to your 
peculiar views: and then exhibit it saying merely, Is 
not that a nice picture? It is nobody's in particular. 
It is the joint doing of inany men, and perhaps of 
many years. But where hynms are presented in a 
literary shape, and as the productions of the men who 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 285 

wrote them, the same hiw of honesty applies as in the 
case of all other literary work. I observe, with very 
great satisfaction, that in the admirable " Book of 
Piaise " lately published by Sir Roundell Palmer, that 
eminent lawyer has made it his rule " to adhere 
strictly, in all cases in which it could be ascertained 
to the genuine uncorrupted text of the authors them- 
selves." And Sir Roundell Palmer speaks with just 
severity of the censurable, but almost universal, prac- 
tice of tampering with the text. 

I confess that till I examined Mr, Patmore's vol- 
ume, I had no idea to what an extent this literary 
clipping of the coin had gone, even in the matter of 
poetry for clipping and altering which there is no 
pretext of reason. It appears to me a duty, in the 
interest of truth, to protest against this discreditable 
cutting and carving. There are various editors of 
school-books, and other collections of poetry for the 
young, who seem incapable of giving the shortest 
poem by the greatest poet, without improving it here 
and there with their red brush. No statue is present- 
ed to us without first having its nose knocked off. 
And of course there is no necessity here for squaring 
the poems to some doctrinal standard. It is a pure 
matter of the editor's thinking that he can improve 
the compositions of Campbell, Wordsworth, Moore, 
Goldsmith, Southey, Scott, Byron, Macaulay, or Poe. 
So that in the case of every one of these manifold al- 
terations the question is just this simple one: Whether 



286 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

"Wordsworth or some pushing Teacher of Elocution is 
the best judge of what Wordsworth should say : 
whether we are to hold by these great poets, believing 
that they most carefully considered their most careful 
pieces ; or to hold by anybody who chooses to alter 
them. There is something intensely irritating in the 
idea of Mr. Smith, with his pencil in his hand, sitting 
down with a volume of Wordsworth, every word in 
every line of which was carefully considered by the 
great poet, and stands there because the great poet 
thought it the right word ; and jauntily altering a word 
here and there. The vision still returns to me of the 
sign-painter touching up Raphael. But I have no doubt 
whatsoever that Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown thinks him- 
self quite equal to improving Wordsworth. The self- 
suificiency of human beings is wonderful. I have 
heard of a man who thought he could improve things 
better than anything of Wordsworth's. Probably you 
never heard of the youthful Scotch divine who lived 
in days when stupid bigotry forbade the use of the 
Lord's Prayer in the pulpits of the Scotch church. 
That young divine went to preach for an aged clergy- 
man who was somewhat wiser than his generation : 
and who accordingly told the young divine in the 
vestry before service that the Lord's Prayer was 
habitually used in that church. "Is it necessary," 
said the young divine, " that I should use the Lord's 
Prayer? " " Not at all," replied the aged clergyman, 
*' if you can use anything better." But the young 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 287 

divine was true to his party : and he used certain 
petitions of his own, which he esteemed as improve- 
ments on the Lord's Prayer. 

You may be quite sure that in the compositions of 
any careful writer, you could not alter many words 
without injury to the writer's style. You could make 
few alterations which the writer would approve. In 
a careful style, rely on it, there was some appreciable 
reason present to the author's mind for the employ- 
ment of almost every word ; and for each word's com- 
ing in just where it does. This is true even of prose. 
And I should fancy that few men would long continue 
to write for any periodical the editor of which was 
wont to cut and carve upon their articles. You re- 
member how bitterly Southey used to complain of the 
way in which Lockhart altered his. But all this holds 
good with infinitely greater force in the case of poe- 
try : especially in the case of such short gems as 
many of those in Mr. Patmore's vohime. The prose 
writer, however accurate, covers his pages a day : each 
sentence is carefully weighed ; but weighed rapidly. 
But the poet has lingered long over every word in his 
happiest verse. How carefully each phrase has been 
considered : how each phrase is fitted to all the rest ! 
I declare it seems to me, there is something sacred in 
the best stanzas of a great poet. It is profanation to 
alter a word. And you know how to the sensitively 
strung mind and ear of the author a single wrong note 
makes discord of the whole : the alteration of a word 



288 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

here and there may turn the sublime to the ridiculous. 
And such alterations may be made in all good faith, 
by people whose discernment is not sharpened to this 
particular use. There was a pretty song, popular 
some years ago, which was called " What are the wild 
waves saying ? " The writer had many times heard 
ihat-song : but he hardly recognized its name when he 
heard it once asked for by the title of " What are the 
mad waves roaring ? " Let us have the poet's work 
as he left it. You do not know how painfully the 
least verbal alteration may jar upon a sensitive ear. 
I hold that so sacred is the genuine text of a great 
poet, that even to the punctuation ; and the capital 
letters, however eccentric their use may be ; it should 
be esteemed as sacrilege to touch it. Let me say 
here that no man who does not know the effect upon 
poetry of little typographical features is fit to edit any 
poet. It seems to me that Mr. Coventry Patmore 
fails there. It is plain that he does not perceive, 
with the sensitiveness proper to the editor of another 
man's poetry, what an effect upon the expression of a 
stanza or a line is produced by typographical details. 
Mr. Patmore not unfrequently alters the punctuation 
which the authors (we may suppose) adopted after 
consideration ; and which has grown, to every true 
reader of poetry, as much a part of the stanza as its 
words are. Every one knows how much importance 
Wordsworth attached to the use of capital letters. 
Now, in the poem entitled " Fidelity " ('' Children's 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 289 

Garland,") Mr. Patmore has at niiie different places 
substituted a small letter for Wordsworth's capital : 
considerably to the destruction of the expression 
of the piece : and at any rate to the clipping of the 
coin Wordsworth left us. In the last verse of Poe's 
grand poem, " The Raven," Mr. Patmore has, in six 
lines, made Jive alterations : one quite uncalled for ; 
four for the worse. Poe wrote demon : Mr. Patmore 
chooses to make it dcemon. Poe wrote " the shadow 
that lies floating on the floor : " Mr. Patmore substi- 
tutes is for lies : to the detriment of the sense. And 
Poe ends the stanza thus : 

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor 
Shall be lifted — nevermore ! 

It is extraordinary how many variations for the 
worse Mr. Patmore introduces into the last line. 
He makes it 

Shall be lifted "Nevermore." 

1 St. The dash before the nevermore is omitted : a 
loss. 

2d. The Nevermore is made to begin with a capi- 
tal : which, though very right in preceding stanzas, 
is here absurd. 

3d. The Nevermore is marked as a quotation : which 
it is not. It is one in the preceding stanzas, and is 
properly marked as one : but here the mark of quo- 
tation is wrong. 

4th. Poe puts, most fitly, a mark of exclamation 
19 



290 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

after the nevermore ! If ever there was a stanza 
which should end with that point, it is here. But 
Mr. Patmore, for no earthly reason, leaves it out. 

Now, some folk may say these are small matters. 
I beg to say that they are not small matters to any 
accurate reader : and above all, to any reader with 
an eye for the expression of poetry. And no man, 
who has not an eye for these minute points, and who 
does not feel their force, is fit for an editor of poetry. 
I am quite sure that no mortal, with an eye for such 
niceties, will deny, that each of Mr. Patmore's four 
alterations of one line of Poe is an alteration for the 
worse. I have taken as the proper repr^entation of 
Poe the best American edition of his whole works, 
in four volumes. But if you look at the beautiful 
little edition of his poems, edited by Mr. Hannay, 
you will find that the accurate scholar has given that 
stanza exactly as the American edition gives it : and, 
of course, exactly right. If Mr. Patmore does not 
understand how indescribably irritating these little 
cuttings and carvings are to a careful reader or 
writer, he is not the man to edit the " Children's 
Garland," or any other collection of poetry. Every 
one can imagine the indignation with which Words- 
worth the scrupulous and Poe the minutely accurate 
would have learned that their best poems were, either 
through carelessness, or with the design of making 
them better, altered by Mr. Patmore, even in the 
matter of capital letters and points : and that finally 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 291 

the result was to be exhibited to the world, not as 
Raphael touched up by Smith the sign-painter, but as 
Raphael pure and genuine. 

And while thus fault-finding at any rate, I am 
obliged to say that though acquitting Mr. Patmore 
of any vainglorious purpose of improving those " Best 
Poets " from whom he has selected his " Garland," I 
cannot acquit him of culpable carelessness in a good 
many instances. Though he may not have smeared 
the great master's picture with red paint, he has not 
been sufficiently careful to present the picture to us 
unsmeared by anybody else. Except in those " very 
few instances " in which he has changed a word or 
phrase " unfit for children's reading," we have a right 
to expect an accurate version of the text. But it is 
quite easy to point out instances in which Mr. Pat- 
more's reading could not have been derived from any 
edition of the poet, however bad ; nor can any one 
say that Mr. Patmore's reading is an improvement 
upon the textus receptus. The third and fourth lines 
of Macaulay's poem, " The Armada," run as follows : 

When that great fleet invincible against her bore in vain 
The richest spoils of Mexico, the stoutest hearts of Spain. 

Mr. Patmore makes two alterations in these lines. 
For that great Jleet, he reads the great Jleet, to the 
detriment alike of rhythm and meaning. And for 
the richest spoils of Mexico, he reads the richest stores. 
It is extremely plain that spoils is a much better word 



292 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

than stores. It was not the stores of Mexico ; that is, 
the wealth stored up in Mexico ; that the Armada 
bore. It was the spoils of Mexico ; that is, the 
wealth which the Spaniards had taken away from 
Mexico ; that the Armada bore. It is possible that 
the Spaniards may have taken away all the wealth 
of Mexico : in which case the spoils and the stores 
would coincide in fact. But they would still be to- 
tally different in conception ; and so exact a writer as 
Macaulay would never confound the two things. 

Next, let us turn to Campbell's touching verses en- 
titled " The Parrot." Campbell put at the top of his 
verses the words, " The Parrot : a domestic Anec- 
dote." Mr. Patmore puts the words, " The Parrot : 
a true Story." The poem tells us, very simply and 
beautifully, how a certain parrot, which in its early 
days had been accustomed to hear the Spanish lan- 
guage spoken, was brought to the island of INIull ; 
where, we may well suppose, it heard no Spanish. 
It lived in Mull for many years, till its green and 
gold changed to gi-ay : till it grew blind and appar- 
ently dumb. But let the story be told in the poet's 
words : 

At last, when blind and seeming dumb, 

He scolded, laugh'd, and spoke no more, 
A Spanish stranger chanced to come 

To IMulla's shore; 
He haird the bird in Spanish speech, 

The bird in Spanish speech replied, 
Flapp'd round his cage with joyous screech, 

Dropt down, and died. 



CONCEHNIXG CUTTING AND CARVING. 293 

Tn glancing over Mr. Patmore's reading of this 
little piece, I am annoyed by observing several al- 
terations in Campbell's punctuation : every altera- 
tion manifestly for the worse. But there is a more 
serious tampering with the text. The moral of the 
poem, of course, is that parrots have hearts and 
memories as well as we. And the poem sets out 
by stating that great principle. The first verse is : 

The deep affections of the breast, 
That Heaven to living things imparts, 

Are not exclusively possess'd 
By human hearts, 

Mr. Patmore has the bad taste, not to say more, to 
leave that verse out. I cannot see any good reason 
why. The principle it states is one which a word or 
two would render quite intelligible to any child. In- 
deed, to any child who could not take in that principle, 
the entire story would be quite unintelligible. And 
I cannot recognize Mr. Patmore's treatment of this 
poem as other than an unjustifiable tampering with 
the coin of the realm. 

There is another poem of Campbell's which fares 
as badly. Campbell calls it " Napoleon and the Brit- 
ish Sailor." Mr. Patmore, in his zeal for cutting and 
carving, calls it " Napoleon and the Sailor : a true 
Story." This poem, like the last, sets out with a 
principle or sentiment ; and then goes on with the 
facts. Mr. Patmore takes it upon himself to leave 
out that first verse : and then to daub the second 



294 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

verse in order to make it intelligible in the absence of 
the first. I hold this to be utterly unpardonable. It 
is emphatically Raphael improved by the sign-painter. 
And the pretext of anything " unfit for children's 
reading " will not hold here. Any child that could 
understand the story, would understand this first verse : 

I love contemplating — apart 

From all his homicidal glory, 
The traits that soften to our heart 

Napoleon's story! 

Then Campbell's second verse runs thus : 

'Twas while his banners at Boulogne 
Armed in our island every freeman, 

His navy chanced to capture one 
Poor British seaman. 

Thus simply and naturally does the story which fol- 
lows, rise out of the sentiment which the poet has ex- 
pressed. But as Mr. Patmore has cut out the senti- 
ment, he finds it necessary to tamper with the second 
verse : and accordingly he starts in this abrupt, awk- 
ward, and ugly fashion ; which no true reader of 
Campbell will behold without much indignation : and 
which would have roused the sensitive poet himself to 
still greater wrath : — 

Napoleon's banners at Boulogne 

Armed in our island every freeman, 
His navy chanced, 

And so on. Here, you see, in the verse as im- 
proved by Mr. Patmore, we have two distinct propo- 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 295 

sitions; separated by a comma. Mr. Patmore not 
merely has no eye for punctuation ; but is plainly 
ignorant of its first principles. If any schoolboy, 
after having had the use of the colon and semicolon 
explained to him, were to use a comma in such fash- 
ion in an English theme, he would richly deserve a 
black mark for stupidity ; and he would doubtless re- 
ceive one. But apart from this lesser matter, which 
will not seem small to any one with a sense of gram- 
matical accuracy, I ask whether it be not too bad that 
Campbell's natural and beautiful verse should be adul- 
terated into this irritating caricature of it. 

Let us next test Mr. Patmore's accuracy in ex- 
liibiting Sir Walter Scott. Everybody knows " Lady 
Heron's Song" which Sir Walter himself called " Loch- 
invar : " but which Mr. Patmore, eager for change, 
calls " Young Lochinvar." Sir Walter's first two 
lines are these : 

O, 3'oung Lochinvar is come out of the west, 
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best. 

Mr. Patmore cannot render these simple lines ac- 
curately. He begins West with a capital letter : 
which, right or wrong, Sir Walter did not. Then 
he puts a point of exclamation after West, where Sir 
Walter has a comma. Sir Walter tells us that Loch- 
invar's steed was the best : Mr. Patmore improves the 
statement into his steed is the best. The very pettiness 
of these changes makes them the more irritating. 
Grantins: that Mr. Patmore's reading is neither bet- 



296 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

ter nor worse than the original, why not leave us the 
poem as the great man gave it us ? Through all that 
well-known song, one is worried by Mr. Patmore's 
wretched little smears of red paint. The punctuation 
throughout is no longer matter for an imposition : it 
is matter for a flogging. Sir Walter says, 

So boldly he entered the Nethorby Hall: 

Mr. Patmore with his brush makes it so bravely. 
And, eager for change at any price, Mr. Patmore 
gives us a new spelling of the name of the river Esk. 
Sir Walter, like everybody else, spells that word Esh. 
Mr. Patmore is not content with this, but develops 
the word into Eshe. Sir Walter describes a certain 
locality as Cannohie Lee : Mr. Patmore improves the 
name into Cannohie lea. And finally, the song end- 
ing with a question, Sir Walter ends it with a point of 
interrogation. But Mr. Patmore, impatient of the 
restraints of grammar, concludes with a point of ex- 
clamation. 

All this is really too bad. Byron flires no better : 
and Mr. Patmore's alterations are of the same irritat- 
ing and contemptible kind. Byron wrote 

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, 
But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride; 

Mr. Patmore cannot leave this alone. In the first 
line he reads nostrils for nostril: in the second, them 
for it. Now, not only are Byron's words the best, 
just because Byron chose them : but Byron's descrip- 



CONCERNIN.G CUTTING AND CARVING. 297 

tion is strikingly true to fact. Every one who has 
ever seen a horse fallen, or a horse dead, knows how 
remarkably y?a^ the creature lies upon the ground. It 
is startling to find the sixteen hands of height when 
the animal was upon his legs, turned to something that 
hardly surpasses your knee when the creature is lying 
upon h\s side. And the head of a dead horse, lying 
upon the ground, would show one nostril and not two. 
You would see only the upper one : and remark that 
the warm breath of the creature was no longer rolling 
througli that. These little matters make just the dif- 
ference between being accurate and being inaccurate: 
between beins: right and beino; wrono". 

I do not know whether it be from a desire to im- 
prove Mr. Keble's name, that Mr. Patmore, in his 
" Index of Writers," alters it to Keehle. I object 
likewise to Mr. Patraore's improving Barnfield's 
couplet 

She, poor bird, as all forlorn, 

Leaned her breast up till a thorn : 

by' substituting against for up till. The very stupid- 
est child would know, after one telling, the meaning 
of up till : and Mr. Patmore's alteration is a destruc- 
tion of the antique flavor of the piece. 

The thoughtful reader, who has had some experi- 
ence of life, must have arrived at this conviction : 
that if two or three slices of a leg of mutton are ex- 
tremely bad, all the rest of the leg is probably bad 
too. I have not examined the whole of Mr. Pat- 



298 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

more's volume : but I am obliged to conclude, from 
the absence of minute accuracy in the pieces which I 
have examined, that the entire volume is deficient in 
minute accuracy. Now, in a book like this, accuracy 
is the first thing. If any scholar were to take up a 
play of -/Eschylus or Aristophanes, and find it as care- 
lessly edited as several of the poems which we have 
considered, I think the scholar would be disposed to 
throw that play into the fire. And I cannot for my 
life see why perfect accuracy should be less sought 
after by an editor of English poems than by an editor 
of Greek plays. 

But on the general question of cutting and carving 
I would almost go so far as to say, that after a poem 
has been current for years, and has found a place in 
many memories, not even its author has a right to 
alter it. Nothing, at least, but an improvement the 
most extraordinary, can justify such a breaking in 
upon a host of old associations. It is a mortifying 
thing, when a man looks, in later life, into the volume 
of his fjivorite author, to find that the things he best 
remembers are no longer there. Even manifest im- 
provement cannot reconcile us to the change. When 
the present writer was a youth at College, he cherished 
an enthusiastic admiration for John Foster's " Essays." 
Let it be said, his admiration is hardly less now. I 
lead and re-read them in a large octavo volume : one 
of the earlier editions, which had not received the au- 
thor's latest corrections. Yet I valued every phrase : 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 299 

and I well remember hovv aggrieved I felt when I got 
an edition with Foster's final emendations ; and found 
that Foster had cut out, and toned down, and varied, 
just the things of which my memory kept the firmest 
hold. One feels as though one had a vested interest 
in what had been so prized and lingered over. You 
know how Wordsworth and Moore kept touching up 
their verses : generally for the worse. I do not think 
the last edition which Wordsworth himself corrected, 
is the best edition of his poetry. In that poem of his 
which has already been named, concerning the faith- 
ful dog on Helvellyn, he made, late in life, various lit- 
tle changes : which not being decidedly for the better, 
must be held as for the worse. For any change from 
the dear old way is for the worse, unless it be very 
markedly for the better. And surely, after describing 
the finding of the poor tourist's body, the old way, 
which was this : 

Sad sight ! the shepherd, with a sigh, 
Looks round, to learn the history: 

is quite as good as the new way, which is this : 

The appalled Discoverer with a sigh, 
Looks round, to learn the history. 

No rule, indeed, can be laid down here. No great 
poet cuts and carves upon his own productions so 
much as Mr. Tennyson. You remember how 

Revered Victoria, you that hold — 



300 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

has changed into 

Revered, beloved, oh you that hold. 

You remember how in the story of the schoolboys 
who stole a litter of pigs, the passage, 

We paid in person,, scored upon that part 
Which cherubs want. 

has now dropped all reference to the scoring. And 
" Locksley Hall " bristles with verbal alterations, 
which every careful reader of Tennyson knows. One 
bows, of course, to the presence of Mr. Tennyson ; 
and does not venture to set up one's own taste as 
against his. Yet, let me confess it, I miss and I re- 
gi*et some of the old tilings. Doubtless there are pas- 
sages which at the first were open to hostile criticism, 
and which met it : which now have been raised above 
all cavil. There is that passage in the " Dream of 
Fair Women," which describes the death of Iphi- 
genia. She tells of it herself. Here is the verse 
as it stands even in the seventh edition : 

The tall masts quivered as they lay afloat, 
The temples and the people and the shore; 

One drew a sharp knife thro'' my lender throat 
Slowly^ — and nothing more. 

Every one feels how unpleasant is the picture con- 
veyed by the last two lines. It passes the limits of 
tragedy, and approaches the physically revolting. It 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 301 

-s, likewise, suggestive rather of the killing of a sheep 
L»r pig, than of the solemn sacrifice of a human being. 
I confess, I incomparably prefer the simplicity of the 
inspired statement : " And Abraham stretched forth 
his hand, and took the knife to shiy his son." We 
don't want any details as to how the knife was to be 
used ; or as to the precise point at which it was to let 
out life. It would jar, were we to read, " Abraham 
stretched forth his hand, and was just going to cut 
Isaac's throat." Now Mr. Tennyson is worse than 
that : for he gives us, doubtless with painful accuracy, 
the account of the actual cutting of the throat. Then, 
besides this, Mr. Tennyson's verse, as it used to stand, 
was susceptible of a wrong interpretation. I do not 
mean that any candid reader would be likely to mis- 
take the poet's sense : but I mean that an ill-set critic 
would have occasion for misrepresenting it. You may 
remember that a severe critic did misrepresent it. 
In an ancient Review, you may see the verse printed 
as I have given it above : and then the critic goes on 
to say something like this : " What an unreasonable 
person Iphigenia must have been ! ' He cut my 
throat : nothing more : ' what more could the woman 
possibly want ? " Of course, we know what the poet 
meant : but, in strictness, what he meant he did not 
say. But look to the latest edition of Mr. Tennyson's 
poems ; and you will be content. Here is the verse 
now. You will see that it has been most severely cut 
and carved ; but to a most admirable result : 



302 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

The high masts trembled as they la}' afloat; 

The towers, the temples wavered, and the shore; 
The bright death quivered at the victim's throat, 

Touched, and I knew no more. 

I should fancy, my friend, that you have nothing to 
say against such tampering with the coin. This is as 
though a piece of baser metal were touched with the 
philosopher's stone, ^nd turned to gold. And there 
have been cases in which a very felicitous change has 
been made by one man upon the writing of another. 
A single touch has sometimes done it. I wonder 
whether Mr. Palgrave was aware that, in giving in 
his book those well-known verses " To Althea from 
Prison," which he rather absurdly describes as by 
Colonel Lovelace (why does he not tell us that his 
extracts from a greater poet are by William Shak- 
speare, Esquire'^), there is one verse which he has 
not given as Lovelace wrote it, 

When I lie tangled in her hair 

And fetter'd to her eye, 
The birds, that wanton in the air, 

Know no such liberty. 

Lovelace wrote " the gods that wanton in the air : " 
and birds was substituted by Bishop Percy. It is a 
simple and obvious substitution : and the change is so 
greatly and so unquestionably for the better, that it 
may well be accepted : as indeed it has universally 
been. 

The mention of a happy substitution naturally sug- 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 303 

gests the most unhappy substitution on record. You 
may remember how the great scholar, Bentley, puffed 
up by his success in making emendations on Horace 
and Terence, unluckily took it upon himself to edit 
Milton. And here indeed, we have, with a vengeance, 
Raphael improved by the painter of wagons. Milton 
wrote, as everybody knows : 

No light, but rather darkness visible : 
but Bentley, eager to improve the line, turns it to 

No light, but rather a transpicuous gloom. 

There is another passage in which the contrast be- 
tween the master and the wagon-painter is hardly less 
marked. Where Milton wrote, 

Our torments also may in length of time 
Become our elements: 

Bentley, as an improvement, substituted the following 
remarkable passage. 

Then, as "'twas loell observed, our torments maj', 
Become our elements. 

It is to be admitted that the stupidity of Bentley's 
reading, is even surpassed by its impudence. Of 
course, the principle taken for granted at the begin- 
ning of such a work is, that Bentley's taste and judg- 
ment were better than Milton's. For, you observe, 
there was no pretext here of restoring a more accurate 



304 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

reading, lost through time : there was no pretext of 
giving more exactly what Milton wrote. There was 
no question as to Milton's precise words : but Bentley 
thought to make them better. And there is something 
insuiferable in the picture of the self-satisfied old Don, 
sitting down in his easy-chair with " Paradise Lost:" 
and, pencil in hand, proceeding to improve it. Doubt- 
less he was a very great classical scholar : but unless 
his wits had mainly forsaken him when he set himself 
to edit Milton, it is very plain that he never could 
have been more than an acute verbal critic. Thinking 
of Bentley's " Milton," one imagines the Apollo Bel- 
vedere put in a hair-dresser's window, with a magnifi- 
cent wig : and dressed in a suit of clothes of the very 
latest fashion. I think likewise of an incident in tiie 
life of Mr. N. P. Willis, the American author. When 
he was at college in his youth, the head of his college 
kept a white horse, which he was accustomed to drive 
in a vehicle of some kind or other. Mr. N. P. Willis 
and his companions surreptitiously obtained temporary 
possession of the horse ; and painted it crimson, with a 
blue mane and tail. I confess that I like Mr. N. P. 
Willis better for that deed, than for anything else I 
ever heard of his doing : and I may mention, for the 
satisfaction of my younger readers, that the colors used 
in painting the horse were of such a nature, that they 
adhered to the animal for a lengthened period, not- 
withstanding all endeavors to remove them. Now 
Dr. Bentley, in editing Milton, did as it were paint 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 305 

the white horse crimson and bkie ; and then exhibited 
it to the world, saying, " That is Smith's fine horse ! " 
Nor should it be accepted as any apology for like con- 
duct on the part of" any editor, that the editor in good 
faith has such a liking for these colors, that he thinks 
a horse looks best when it looks blue and crimson. 
And though the change made by an editor be not of 
such a comprehensive nature as the painting of an 
entire horse anew, but rather consists of a multitude 
of little touches here and there ; — as points changed, 
capitals left out, and whiches for thats ; still the result 
is very irritating. You know that a very small infu- 
sion of a foreign substance can vitiate a thing. Two 
drops of prussic acid in a cup of water: two smears 
of red paint across the Raphael : affect the whole. I 
know hardly any offence, short of great crime, which 
seems to me deserving of so severe punishment, as 
this of clipping the coin of the realm of literature. 

There is something, too, which irritates one, in the 
self-sufficient attitude which is naturally assumed by a 
man who is cutting and carving the composition of 
another. It is an evil which attends all reviewing, 
and which a modest and conscientious reviewer must 
feel keenly, that in reviewing another man's book, you 
seem to assume a certain superiority to him. For in 
every case in which you find fault with him, you are 
aware that the question comes just to tliis, — whether 
your opinion or his is worth most. To which may be 
added the further question : whether you or he have 



306 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

devoted most time and thought to forming a just 
opinion on this particular point. But when a man 
sits down not merely to point out an author's faults, 
but to correct them ; the assumption of superiority is 
more marked still. And everybody knows that the 
writings of great geniuses have been unsparingly cut 
and carved by very inferior men. You know how 
Byron sent " The Siege of Corinth " to Mr. Gifford, 
giving him full power to alter it to any extent he 
pleased. And you know how Mr. Gifford did alter 
it ; by cutting out all the good passages and leaving 
all the bad. The present writer has seen a man in 
the very act of cutting and carving. Once upon a 
time I entered a steamer which was wont to ply upon 
the waters of a certain noble river, that winds between 
Highland hills. And entering that bark, I beheld a 
certain friend, seated on the quarter-deck, with a little 
volume in his hand. I never saw a man look more 
entirely satisfied with himself than did my friend ; as 
he turned over the leaves of the little volume in a 
hasty, skipping fashion ; and jauntily scribbled here 
and there with a pencil. I beheld him in silence for 
a time, and then asked what on earth he was doing. 
" Oh," said he, " I am a member of the committee 
appointed by the Great Council to prepare a new 
book of hymns to be sung throughout the churches of 
this countr3\ And this little volume is a proof copy 
of the hymns suggested : and a copy of it is sent to 
each member of the committee to receive his emen- 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 307 

dations. And as you see, I am beguiling my time in 
sailing down the river by improving these hymns." 
In this easy manner did my fiiend scribble whatever 
alterations might casually suggest themselves, upon the 
best compositions of the best hymn writers. Slowly 
and laboriously had the authors written those hymns, 
carefully weighing each word ; and weighing each 
word perhaps for a very long time. But in the pauses 
of conversation, with no serious thought whatsoever, 
but willing to testify how much better he knew what a 
hymn should be than the best authors of that kind of 
literature, did my friend set down his random thoughts. 
Give me that volume, said I, with no small indigna- 
tion. He gave it to me, and I proceeded to examine 
his improvements. And I can honestly say that not 
merely was every alteration for the worse ; but that 
many of the alterations testified my friend's utter ig- 
norance of the very first principles of metrical com- 
position ; and that all of them testified the extreme 
narrowness of his acquaintance with that species of 
literature. Some of the verses, as altered by him, 
were astounding specimens of rhythm. The only 
thing I ever saw which equalled them was a stanza 
by a local poet, very zealous for the observance of 
the Lord's day. Here is the stanza : 

Ye that keep horses, read psahii 50; 

To win money on the Sabbath day, see that ye never be so thrifty ! 

In Scotland we have a psalter and a hymnal im- 
posed by ecclesiastical authority : so that in all parish 



308 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

churches there is entire uniformity in the words of 
praise. But it worries one to enter a church in Eng- 
hind, and to find, as one finds so often, that the incum- 
bent has [)ubHshed a hymnal, tlie sale of which he 
insures by using it in his church ; and all the hymns 
in which are cut and carved to suit his peculiar doc- 
trinal and a3Sthetical views. The execrable taste and 
the remarkable ignorance evinced in some of these 
compilations, have on myself, I confess, the very re- 
verse of a devotional effect. And the inexpressible 
badness of certain of the hymns I have seen in such 
volumes, leads me to the belief that they must be the 
original compositions of the editor himself. There is 
an excellent little volume of Psalms and Hymns, 
collected by Mr. Henry Herbert Wyatt, of Trinity 
Chapel, Brighton ; but even in it, one is annoyed 
by occasional needless clianges. In Bishop Heber's 
beautiful hymn, which begins '• From Greenland's icy 
mountains," Mr. Wyatt has smeared the third verse. 
The Bishop wrote, as every one knows. 

Shall we, whose souls are lighted 

With wisdom from on high, — 
Shall we to men benighted 

The lamp of life deny? 

But Mr. Wyatt substitutes can for the shall with 
which the first and third lines begin : a change 
which no man of sense can call an improvement. A 
hymn to which I always turn, as one that tests an 
editor, is Bishop Ken's incomparable one, commonly 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 309 

called the " Evening Hymn." I find, with pleasure, 
that Mr. Wyatt has not tried to improve it : save that 
he has adopted an alteration which has been all but 
universally accepted. Bishop Ken wrote. 

All praise to Thee, my God this night: 

while most of us, from childhood, have been taught to 
substitute Glory for All Praise. And this is certainly 
an improvement. Glory, gloria, is certainly the right 
word with which to begin an ascription of praise to 
the Almighty. If not in itself the fittest word, the 
most ancient and revered associations of the Christian 
Church give it a prescriptive right to preference. A 
hymn which no man seems able to keep his sacri- 
legious hands off is Charles Wesley's hymn, 

Jesu, lover of my soul. 

I observe Mr. Wyatt makes three alterations in the 
first three lines of it, — each alteration for the worse. 
But I begin to be aware that no human being can be 
trusted to sit down with a h^^mn-book and a pencil, 
with leave to cut and carve. There is a fascination 
about the work of tampering : and a man comes to 
change for what is bad rather than not change at all. 
There are analogous cases. When I dwelt in the 
country, I was once cutting a little path through a 
dense thicket of evergreens ; and a friend from the 
city, who was staying with us, went out with me to 
superintend the proceedings. Weakly, I put into my 



310 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

friend's hands a large and sharp weapon, called in 
Scotland a scutching -knife : and told him he might 
smooth off certain twigs which projected unduly on 
the path. My friend speedily felt the fascination of 
cutting and carving. And after having done consider- 
able damage, he restored me the weapon, saying he 
felt its possession was a temptation too strong for him 
to resist. When walking about with the keen sharp 
steel in his hand, it was really impossible to help 
snipping off any projecting branch which obtruded 
itself upon the attention. And the writer's servant 
(dead, poor fellow : one of the worthiest though most 
unbending of men) declared, with much solemnity 
and considerable indignation, that in forming a walk 
he would never again suffer the scutching-knife to be 
in any other hands than his own. Now, it is a like 
temptation that assails the editor of hymns : and even 
if the editor is a competent man (and in most cases 
he is not) I don't think it safe to trust him with the 
scutching-knife. The only editor of hymns whom the 
writer esteems as a perfect editor, is Sir Roundell 
Palmer. For Sir Roundell starts with the determi- 
nation to give us each hymn exactly as its author left 
it. It is delightful to read " All praise to Thee, my 
God, this night : " and to come upon 

Jesu, lover of my soul, 
Let me to Tiiy bosom fly: 

after " Jesu, Saviour of my soul : " and " Jesus refuge 

of my soul." I remark, in Sir Roundell's book, oc- 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 311 

casional signs of having taken a hymn from an early 
edition of the author's works : which, in later editions 
was retouched by the author himself. Thus James 
Montgomery's " Friend after friend departs," is given 
as first published : not as the author left it. In the 
four verses, Montgomery mnde Jive alterations: which 
are not shown in Sir Roundeli's work. But, as one 
who feels much interest in hymnal literature, and who 
has given some attention to it, I cannot refrain from 
saying that in the matter of faithfulness, Sir Roundell 
Palmer's book is beyond question or comparison the 
best. There is nothing second, third, or tenth to it. 
It is first ; and the rest are nowhere. 

Having mentioned the best hymnal that I know, 
one naturally thinks of the worst. There is a little 
volume purporting to be Hymns collected hy the Com- 
mittee of the General Assembly on Psalmody: pub- 
lished at Edinburgh in 1860. It is to be remembered 
that the Church of Scotland has never approved this 
little volume : the committee have published it on 
their own responsibility. Mr. Wyatt, in making his 
collection, tells us he examined thirty thousand hymns, 
and took the best of them. Sir Roundell Palmer also 
gives us in his volume the best hymns in the lan- 
guage. But neither Mr. Wyatt nor Sir Roundell 
(both most competent judges) have seen fit to admit 
much of the matter contained in this little compila- 
tion. So we may conclude, either that Mr. Wyatt 
did not find some of these compositions among his 



312 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

thirty thousand : or that, having examined thera, he 
did not think them worthy of admission to his collec- 
tion of about two hundred and fifty hymns. Sir 
Roundell Palmer's hymns number four hundred and 
twelve : and he has not erred on the side of exclu- 
sion : yet he has excluded a good many of the Scotch 
eighty-five. Out of the first fifteen of the Scotch 
book, fourteen are unknown to him. And I do not 
think cutting and carving ever went to a length so 
reprehensible, as in this volume. As to the fitness of 
the hymns for use in church, opinions may possibly 
differ : but I am obliged to say that I never saw any 
collection of such pieces so filled with passages in ex- 
ecrable taste, and utterly unfit for Christian worship. 
It may amuse my readers, to show them George 
Herbert improved. Everybody knows the famous 
poem, " The Elixir." It consists of six verses. The 
Scotch reading consists of four. In the first verse, 
three verbal alterations, intended as improvements, 
are made on Herbert. " Teach me, my God and 
king," becomes, " Teach us, our God and king." The 
second verse in the Scotch reading, is unknown to 
Herbert. It is the doing of some member of the 
committee. The gold has been punched out, and a 
piece of pinchbeck has been put in. Herbert's third 
verse is omitted. Then comes the well-known verse : 

All may of Thee partake: 

Nothing can be so mean, 
Which, with this tincture, Fou Thy sake, 

Will not grow bright and clean. 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 313 

This is improved as follows : 

All may of Thee partake ; 

Nothing so small can be, 
But draws, when acted foi' Thy sake, 

Greatness and worth from Thee. 

You will doubtless think that Herbert pure is bet- 
ter tlian Herbert improved by the sign-painter. But 
the next verse is smeared even worse. Who does 
not remember the saintly man's words : 

A servant with this clause, 

Makes drudgery divine: 
Who sweeps a room, as for Th}^ laws, 

flakes that, and the action, fine. 

But, as Sam Weller remarked of Mr. Pickwick 
in a certain contingency, " his most formiliar friend 
voodnt know him," as thus disguised : 

If done beneath Thy laws, 
Even humblest labors shine: 
Hallowed is toil, if this the cause, 
The meanest work, divine. 

Herbert's temper, we know, was angelic : but I 
wonder what he would have looked like, had he seen 
himself thus docked, and painted crimson and blue. 
No doubt, " The Elixir," as the master left it, is not 
fitted for congregational singing. But that is a reason 
for leaving it alone : it is no reason for thus unpar- 
donably tampering with the coin of the realm. 

There are various pieces in this unfortunate work, 
whose appearance in it I can explain only on this 



314 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

theory. Probably, some day when the committee 
met, a member of committee produced a manuscript, 
and said that here was a hymn of his own composi- 
tion ; and begged that it might be put in the book. 
The other members read it, and saw it was rubbish : 
but their kindly feehng prevented their saying so : 
and in it went. One of the last things many people 
learn, is not to take offence when a friend declines to 
admire their literary doings. I have not the faintest 
idea who are the members of the committee which 
issued this compilation. Likely enough, there are in 
it some acquaintances of my own. But that fact shall 
not prevent my saying what I honestly believe : that 
it is the very worst hymn-book I ever saw. I cannot 
believe that the persons who produced it, could ever 
have paid any attention to hymnal literature : they 
have so thoroughly missed the tone of all good hymns. 
Indeed, many of the hymns seem to be formed on the 
model of what may be called the Scotch " Preaching 
Prayer : " the most offensive form of devotion known ; 
and one entirely abandoned by all the more cultivated 
of the Scotch clergy. I heard, indeed, lately, an in- 
dividual pray at a meeting about the Lord's day. In 
his prayer, he alluded to the Lancashire distress : and 
informed the Almighty that the patience with which 
the Lancashire people bore it was very much the 
result of their being trained in Sunday-schools. But. 
leaving this volume, which is really not worth farther 
notice, let me mention, that in the first twelve lines of 



CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 315 

" Jesu, lover of my soul," there are ten improvements 
made on Wesley. " While the tempest still is high," 
has nigh substituted for high. " Till the storm of life 
is past," is made " Till the storms of life are past." 
" Oh receive my soul at last," has And substituted 
for Oh : for no conceivable reason. And the famihar 
line, " Hangs my helpless soul on Thee," has been 
turned, by the wagon-painter, into " Clings my help- 
less soul to Thee." I ask any intelligent reader, Is 
not this too bad .'' All my readers know that I am a 
clergyman of the Church of Scotland, for whose use 
these hymns have been so debased and tampered with. 
They never shall be sung in my church, you may rely 
on it. And the fact, that this cutting and carving has 
been done so near home, serves only to make me the 
more strongly to protest against it. 

If it were not far too large a subject to take up 
now, I should say something in reprobation of the 
fashion in which many people venture to cut and 
carve upon words far more sacred than those of any 
poet : I mean upon the woi'ds of Holy Scripture. 
Many people improve a scriptural text or phrase when 
they quote it : the improvement generally consisting 
in giving it a slight twist in the direction of their own 
peculiar theological views. I have heard of a man 
who quoted as from Scripture the following words : 
" It is appointed unto all men once to die ; and after 
death HeU." It was pointed out to him that no such 



316 CONCERNING CUTTING AND CARVING. 

statement exists in Scripture : the words which follow 
the mention of death being, " and after this the judg- 
ment." But the misquoter of Scripture decHned to 
accept the correction, declaring that he thought his 
own reading was better. I have heard of a revival 
preacher who gave out as his text the words " Ye 
shall all likewise perish." Every one Avill know what 
a wicked distortion he made of our Saviour's warning 
in thus clipping it. And I have heard texts of Scrip- 
ture pieced together in a way that made them convey 
a meaning just as far from that of the inspired writ- 
ers, as that conveyed by the well-known mosaic, " And 
Judas departed, and went and hanged himself: " " Go 
thou and do likewise." 

Probably the reader is tired of the subject. I 
thank him for his patience in following me so far : 
and I shall keep him no longer from something more 
interesting. 



CONCLUSION. 






^ f(nj\ WAS sitting by my study fire this even- 
ing in a rocking-chair, in the restful inter- 
val between dinner and tea, and thinking 
^V^ how I should conclude this volume. In 
that meditative state, my attention was drawn to a 
little girl who w^as sitting on the floor a little way off, 
sewing, and at the same time talking to herself. 

These were her words ; — they were spoken slowly, 
in a pensive tone, and with considerable pauses be- 
tween the sentences. 

" Once I thought a great deal of a shilling. Now, 
I think nothing of it. I am accustomed to shillings. 
I think nothing even of a pound. I have got one 
myself, and I thing nothing of it." 

You see, the freshness and edge of enjoyment were 
gone, through habit. Shillings had become too many, 
and so they were not now the great things they used 
to be. And after all, it was no very great number of 
shillings which had sufficed to produce this result. 

Listening to the little girl's meditation, I thought of 



318 CONCLUSION. 

my volume. It is still a curious feeling to see one's 
thoughts in print. The page that bears what you 
have yourself written, my friend, has always a pe- 
culiar expression, — an expression that is familiar and 
yet strange. And there is still more of the singular 
feeling it miparts, when you look at an entire volume 
of your own. But more than one or two have pre- 
ceded this, and the writer begins to feel towards a 
volume as the little girl said she felt towards a shil- 
ling. Yet not quite as the little girl said she felt. 
The freshness is somewhat gone, yet the publication 
of a new book is a little epoch in a quiet life. I 
suppose the Editor of a daily newspaper, seeing him- 
self in print every day of his life, if he pleases, and 
often finding it his duty to write upon subjects in 
which he feels no great personal interest, must cease, 
in a few years, to feel any special attraction to the 
columns that have come from his own pen. There is 
less likelihood of that, in the case of a writer whose 
productions see the light at much longer intervals. 
And you may remember how Southey, who wrote 
probably more in quantity than any English author 
of the present century, with but two or three ex- 
ceptions, tells us that he retained to the last the 
keen interest of a quite fresh writer in his own arti- 
cles. When a new Quarterly appeared, he was quite 
impatient if it were a day too late in reaching him. 
I have no doubt he cut all the leaves before reading 
any, for Southey was a man of an orderly turn ; but 



CONCLUSION. 319 

I am sure he read his own paper the first. And he 
says he always found it very fresh and interesting 
reading, and he conveys that he generally thought it 
very good. As indeed it was. The shillings did not 
lose their value, many as they might grow. 

There have been cases in which the successive 
shillings grew always more precious. You will think 
of Sterne, who appreciated his own writings so highly, 
and who used to write to his friends, as he was draw- 
ing each succeeding volume of " Tristram Shandy " to 
a close, that this new volume was to be by far the 
best. The present writer can say sincerely that each 
succeeding volume of these Essays, which you may 
have read, has been the result of more care and 
thought. He does not write now in the vague hope 
that perhaps somebody may read what he writes ; he 
has the certainty of finding very many kindly readers. 
And he is not able to write now in the unconstrained 
way in which he wrote the first of those chapters, in 
days when not one of his rustic parishioners ever saw 
a page which he put forth. He is conscious now of 
the check which comes of the pervading sense, that a 
great many of the flock intrusted to his care recog- 
nize in what he writes a familiar hand, and can 
compare what is written on these pages with what it 
is his duty to teach them elsewhere. He ventures to 
believe that, in spirit, there is no inconsistency. And 
he knows that in the judgment of those whose judg- 
ment he values most, there is none. 



320 CONCLUSION. 

There is but little time, in the life of a hard-work- 
ing parish clergyman, for writing anything beyond 
that which it is imperative to write. And one may 
sometimes think, with a wearied sigh, even in the 
midst of duty which is very dear, of the learned quiet 
and leisure of canonries and deaneries, such as our 
poor Church has not, — sadly despoiled of that which 
is by right her own. Yet the habit of the pen grows 
into a second nature, and reserved folk never talk out 
their heart so freely as when talking to all tlie world. 
And if we live, friendly reader, I think we shall meet 
asrain. 



THE EXD. 



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